


Shiver

by Lord Valerius (ModernSorcerer)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asgardians - Freeform, Jotunn | Frost Giant, M/M, OC-centric, Post-Avengers, Reincarnation, SHIELD, Sarcasm, Slash, consider yourself warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:12:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6651802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernSorcerer/pseuds/Lord%20Valerius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thousands of years ago the world was shrouded in winter, up until the Asgardians drove the Frost Giants from Earth. But they forgot one. Now, following the Battle of New York the Jotun is awakening, and with him, the planet’s only hope for survival. Can Jackson follow the clues left for him, and find the answer to both the Jotun and the Asgardians now hunting him? OC-story. Slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“You do realize that this is one of the dumbest ideas you’ve ever come up with right?”

Ignoring the critic following him up the stairs, he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder into her face, grinning to himself at the startled noise it pulled from his best friend.

“Matt always locks the roof door, remember?” the blonde behind him pointed out as he reached said problem, tugging uselessly on the handle.

“Matt also always forgets his keys in his apartment door,” he argued.

“Oh my god, Jackson! You stole his keys?”

“What? No! Pay attention, Elle,” he scolded, “I was just pointing it out.”

When his friend just raised her eyebrows at him in disbelief, Jackson sighed and stepped to the side so she could see, brandishing his empty hands about dramatically. As Elle’s expression turned dangerous, he turned and sharply tapped the keyhole twice, concentrating and watching as crystal-like ice spread from where he’d touched the metal door.

“Jackson,” Elle said warningly.

“It’ll be fine,” he dismissed, latching onto the door handle and bracing himself. Throwing his shoulder against the door and stumbling forward when it flew open with a loud crack, Jackson pretended not to notice the way he’d outright shattered the lock as he swung the door shut behind her.

“If Matt asks me if I know why the door is broken, then I’m telling him the truth,” Elle threatened with narrowed eyes.

“What?” Jackson asked, spreading his arms wide as he backed towards the edge of the roof. “You’re going to tell him that I used my magical ice powers to freeze and shatter the deadbolt when we came up here to see if I can fly?”

“Oh for the love of- you can’t fly Jackson!” Elle exclaimed, hands rising to tug at her hair in frustration. “You’ve got these freaky ice powers, not the ability to _fly_ of all things! You don’t even have any proof!”

“That’s what you said about my ‘freaky ice powers’,” he reminded her, only a little offended by her use of the word ‘freak’.

“Yeah,” she agreed simply, “And then you proved that you really had them and that you weren’t going crazy.”

He nodded, waving a hand at the roof around them. “Hence why we’re up here.”

“We’re up here because you think it’s a good idea to _jump off a building_!” Elle yelled. “This isn’t proving anything, this is suicide! At least try to fly in our apartment or something, just to prove you can do it without having to jump ten stories to the ground.”

Glancing over the edge of the building and down those ten floors, Jackson backed away from the ledge as his stomach twisted painfully.

“At least jump from a one story building,” she added, “Before your acrophobia makes you pass out and fall.”

“I bet you feel really smart using a big word like that,” Jackson teased immediately, “And I’m not afraid of heights, I just don’t like them.”

“Uh huh.”

Turning his back on Elle and staring out across the city, Jackson didn’t react as his friend moved up to join him. What could he say to convince her without sounding insane? Elle had been halfway through searching the internet for a therapist when he’d first told her about what he could do, it had taken him panicking and freezing her glass of wine to convince her that he hadn’t lost it. The last thing he wanted to do right now was make her start second-guessing him by telling her the truth.

_‘Actually Elle, I had a dream where I was flying around some giant palace made of ice that was in the middle of a frozen ocean. I’m pretty sure this means I can fly because these dreams of mine haven’t led me wrong so far.’_

Yeah right, she’d be dialing a loony bin for him before he’d even finished speaking.

His first instinct was to jump and prove her wrong, but he had always been rather... put off... by heights, and by falling from heights. He couldn’t help but fear that the dreams were just that, that they were his brain coming up with something related to his ice powers just for the sake of it.

“Hey look!” Elle blurted, pointing out at something. “The cranes are gone from the library.”

Scanning the skyline for the expected crane, Jackson grunted when he realized it was gone. “I wonder how long that’s been missing for,” he mumbled, “It was there last week when I visited.”

“You visited the library last week?” she questioned, a chilling wind ruffling through his hair.

Crap.

“Yeah I needed to issue a book out for work,” he lied quickly, pretending not to notice the way his friend’s eyes narrowed at him. “One of those ‘for dummies’ books,” Jackson added, “Another new guy and not enough qualified trainers. The book is his homework or something.”

“Speaking of work, expect a phone call from my boss sometime next week,” Elle said with a sigh. “She’s given up on our usual guy, so I mentioned you’re an electrician. She said she’d give you a go.”

“Lovely. Like I don’t have a full schedule already,” he deadpanned, “If it’s sent my way I’ll give it a go, you might just need to replace it though.”

“Good luck explaining that to her,” the blonde said with a snort. “It’ll be like talking to a- JACK!”

“Like talking to a Jack?” he echoed, turning to smirk at Elle before freezing as several things became obvious all at once.

His friend wasn’t staring at his face, she was staring at his feet, which were currently standing on the roof’s ledge, which in turn explained why he was looking down at her instead of up.

“When did I get up here?” he breathed out, shakily lowering himself down to hold onto the ledge, flinching as a strong breeze snapped at his loose shirt. “I don’t remember climbing up here,” he mumbled, clamping his eyes shut as his vision swam at the steep drop beside him.

“Jackson!” Elle whimpered as he almost lost his balance, his breath coming out slowly as he stiffened at the sight of ice spreading out from his hands. “Slowly,” she ordered, edging forward to stretch out her hand, reaching for him. “Careful. _Careful_!”

It seemed that the wind hadn’t gotten that memo however, as an unnervingly strong gust seemed to appear out of nowhere to unbalance him, Elle’s cry of shock sounding at the same time as a car horn below. His friend’s hand hitting his shoulder as his shoe slid out from under him on a thin sheet of ice, his breath leaving his lungs as he hit the ledge chest-first before bouncing to the side and off the building.

Now that he thinks about it, Elle was right. He should have tried to learn how to fly in their shared apartment before going anywhere near a ten story drop. It wasn’t like his dreams – real or not – involved him being taught how to fly, in them he just was.

As what he was sure was certain death approached, his body seemed to _spasm_. His head tucking itself against his chest as his lower body twisted, Jackson was hitting the ground feet first with a muffled yelp, his knees giving way beneath him as he fell forward. Whimpering as the ground shock shot up his legs like lightning, the only thing he could do was roll onto his side and curl up in pain. Breathing quickly to try get past it, Jackson rubbed and massaged at his knees, hoping to try soothe away some of the burning sensation as the muscles in his legs screamed.

When the numb yet intense feeling caused by the ground shock faded away, he pulled his body up into a sitting position and grimaced as his knees throbbed warningly. After a pause to let his body adjust, Jackson pushed himself to his feet and almost went tumbling over again, his legs violently protesting the movement as he staggered over to the stairs of his building and collapsed.

He’d landed on his feet, he hadn’t flown, but he’d landed on his feet. Like a cat or something. It wasn’t flight, but it was definitely something, something that only proved to him that he was more of a freak than he had originally thought he was. Normal people didn’t and couldn’t do the things he could do after all, so what exactly did that make him?

Jumping as the door behind him slammed open, Jackson just sent Elle a tired smile over his shoulder as she stared at him in dumb shock. “I have ground shock,” he confessed breathlessly as his friend descended the stairs to drop down beside him, “I fell from the roof of a ten story building and I landed on my feet, with only the worst case of ground shock in history to show for it.”

“I thought you were going to die,” Elle whispered weakly, slumping against his side without another word.

“If it makes you feel better, you were right about this being the dumbest idea I’ve ever had,” he offered, turning his head away as to not see the tears she was wiping from her face. “And if it makes you feel even better, I’m never going to be able to have kids and pass on my sheer stupidity to future generations.”

Elle stared at him in confusion for a moment before her face twisted in pity. “Ground shock?” she asked.

“Ground shock,” he agreed with a wince.

“How about we go inside and get you some ice?” Elle suggested softly, standing and helping him to his feet, not complaining as his trembling legs forced him to learn on her for support. “And booze,” she added absently, “For me. A lot of it.”

When they were both safely ensconced in their apartment, both of them sitting on opposite sides of the room staring at the liberal helpings of wine in their glasses, neither of them felt brave enough to breach the silence and address the elephant in the room.

“Elle?”

“Jackson,” his friend countered, refusing to look at him.

What did he say? What _could_ he say?

“Never mind,” he dismissed, “It doesn’t matter.”

As his friend hummed to herself thoughtfully, staring out the loft windows like they held the answers to everything, Jackson just sighed and tipped back the rest of his drink and set the glass down with a noisy _clink_. Struggling out of the armchair and leaving the frozen peas on the cushion, he waved Elle back down and gestured to the bathroom, limping over to it as quickly as he could while maintaining what little remained of his dignity.

It was only when the door was locked behind him that he allowed himself to react, collapsing against the sink and fighting to control his panic. Glancing up at the mirror in front of him, Jackson stared at his reflection, not entirely sure he recognized the person looking back at him. Four months ago he would have just winked at himself and adjusted his hair, but then four months ago he hadn’t been looking into a mirror that was freezing over as his breath hit it.

“What’s wrong with me?”


	2. Snowstorm

He didn’t get cold anymore.

It was an odd complaint, and certainly not the first one that most people would come up with, but for all his peculiarities it was the one that hit him the hardest.

Jackson had always been more sensitive to the temperature than others, so he was used to being either too hot or too cold with no room in between. But now there didn’t seem to be anything _but_ the in between, with neither a boiling hot shower nor a freezing cold one having any effect on him.

As he watched the water twirling down the drainpipe, only aware of how cold it was because of the way the tap was turned, Jackson wiped the water out of his face and turned his back on the spray. Elle always turned the shower to freezing cold on days she got up before him, it was something she’d done from the first time they shared an apartment. He never learned, much to her amusement, to check the tap before jumping into the shower. Every other day she was treated to his girlish screams when he got shocked awake by the ice-like water.

Strangely enough he was going to miss her childish prank now it wouldn’t work on him.

Glancing over his shoulder at the showerhead, Jackson faltered as a thought struck him, looking around guiltily despite knowing he was the only person in the apartment. Ducking under the spray, he brushed his dark hair from his eyes, pushing himself up onto the balls of his feet to reach the showerhead.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

His attempt at slow and steady exhalation was cut off by a shocked laugh, snow floating gracelessly to the floor, battered and tossed about by the water following it from the showerhead. Rocking back to lean against the wall and pulling a face as wet skin met dry tile, Jackson stared at the water for a moment before reaching up to touch the showerhead, concentrating slightly and feeling his forehead furrowing with the movement.

Face splitting with the force of his grin, he raised his other hand to catch the snow beginning to swirl around the glass cubicle of the shower, chuckling to himself at the sight of a mini snowstorm raining from the ‘sky’ and surrounding his body. Maybe his powers weren’t _all_ bad, when he wasn’t accidentally freezing anything he touched because he was getting moody at least. And as painful as it was, that whole ‘cat landing’ thing he did last night might actually be useful in the future should he end up on the roofs of any other tall buildings.

Although, just thinking about that was making his legs ache.

Slapping the shower off and watching as the last of the snow drifted to the ground, Jackson let out a slow breath and stepped out without looking at the fine layer of snow coating the shower floor.

“Way to kill the mood, Jackson,” he muttered accusingly to himself, reaching for his towel and promptly hit the proverbial breaks. “What the hell?”

He wasn’t a vain man. Sure he put a lot of effort into his appearance, but he – oh who was kidding? He was vain as hell. And he may not look like a model but he was damn proud of his body, he worked hard to look like he did, he was allowed to be proud of it. But vanity often came hand-in-hand with periods of time spent staring into a mirror, looking for areas to work on and trying to find the right clothes for a date.

So it went without saying that he would remember if he had a scar like that.

It wasn’t a very long scar, barely the size of a toothpick in length, but it was its location that made him frown. When had he been cut on his side, under his arm like that? Reaching up to touch it, he pushed a little and felt his finger falling between two ribs. If he’d been watching a movie or one of Elle’s crime shows, he’d have thought he’d been stabbed in the side, the knife slotting between his ribs and sliding straight into his heart. Except, well, he _hadn’t_ been stabbed, he was pretty damned sure he’d remember something like that.

Glancing at the door as the phone went off, Jackson cast the scar one final look before wrapping his towel around his waist loosely and hurrying out into the living room to snatch the phone up.

“Hello?”

_“Jackson, turn on the TV,”_ Elle’s voice demanded immediately.

Shrugging as he did so, he lowered the volume so he could still hear his friend as he asked “And then what?”

_“Discovery channel.”_

Obeying the bossy blonde, Jackson changed the channel and blinked at the sight on the screen. “That was quick,” he offered uncertainly, “But I don’t see what’s so exciting about this. It happened in New York, not in D.C.”

_“It’s not about the Battle of New York,”_ Elle corrected in annoyance, _“Just about aliens in general. They’re proven to exist now, remember?”_

“So?” he asked casually, not fooling either of them. He still remembered his small freak out when the Invasion had happened, sure most of it was worry about their mutual friends and his baby brother who lived in New York, but a lot more of it was him overreacting to the definite proof that aliens existed.

_“Just… just watch it, alright,”_ Elle ordered, _“You might find it more helpful than you think.”_

As his flat mate hung up on him with an excuse about getting back to work, Jackson stood there and stared at the ad for the _‘Alien Life; Confirmed’_ documentary scheduled for later that night.

Barking out a laugh, he switched off the TV and threw the remote down onto the couch. He wasn’t an alien. He wasn’t even adopted. He looked just like his father, with his dark hair and eyes, and his mother’s slimmer body structure and lack of height. Nice theory there Elle, but why not come up with something a little more plausible, he was more likely to be a ‘Hulk’ than an alien. Or whatever that big green man from New York was called.

Twitching as a drop of water landed on his shoulder and started making its way down his back, Jackson turned on his heel and started making his way to his bedroom. He couldn’t stay inside any longer, he needed to go out and find himself some kind of distraction, something that didn’t involve him thinking about aliens or superpowers.

He was going to the mall.

* * *

Why did he want to go out again?

The mall was crowded, the people in it were noisy, and he wasn’t patient enough to deal with the sales women who thought the best way to sell him something was to flirt with him. And despite the fact that he never thought he’d hear himself say these words while he still lived, Jackson didn’t really want to buy any new clothes right now.

In all honesty, he didn’t want to be anywhere near people at all right now, even though he didn’t really want to be alone either.

Weaving through the loud mass of people standing outside the food court, Jackson aimlessly started heading down another randomly chosen walkway, pausing for a moment to glance through the window to a gaming store before continuing. Was there anything he and Elle needed back home? His flat mate had only gotten groceries a couple of days ago, so he didn’t need to do that, but was there anything else?

Huh… nice price for such a big TV. Nah, they don’t need a new TV, their current one works fine for its age.

Rounding a corner and eyeing up a tall brunet as he passed them, Jackson came to a stop in front of one of his preferred clothing shops and went in, not having anything better to do than just take a quick look. Hmmm… had that shirt, had a different color of that shirt, that shirt was ugly. What the hell was that guy wearing? Did he think that he looked good like that? Ooh, scarves, those are new.

Taking a step towards the newest thing to catch his eye, he was almost hitting the ground within seconds, arms flying out to snake around the waist of the yelping red blur that was bouncing off his chest and falling towards a clothing rack.

“Oh lord, I’m sorry,” he blurted awkwardly as he yanked his hands away from the startled woman’s hips, “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“No, you weren’t, were you,” the red-haired woman snapped, smoothing out her shirt with a scowl before freezing and sending him a sheepish smile. “Sorry, that wasn’t fair,” she apologized, “I’ve had a bad day and… I wasn’t looking where I was going either.”

“Still. It wasn’t me that almost went flying,” Jackson pointed out, “So, my bad.”

The woman smiled at him again, her eyes flicking over his chest for a moment before reaching out to tug his shirt back into place. “All’s forgiven,” she assured him.

Shooting her his most disarming smile, Jackson made to step past her only for her to step that way too, the two of them faltering before pointing in the same direction. Huffing out a small laugh as they both ended up walking over to the same stand, he tried not to meet the woman’s twinkling eyes as he picked up a wallet from the accessories bin beside the scarves.

“You like the ‘Avengers’ then, do you?”

“Uh…” he began eloquently as he realized the wallet he was holding was emblazoned with a familiar shield, “My Dad still has the collection of ‘Captain America’ comics that he used to read to me as a kid. If that’s what you mean?”

The woman nodded with a knowing smile, “My Dad has the trading cards,” she confessed, “I may not be all too into superheroes, but the Captain is my favorite.”

“My condolences,” he said without thinking about it, for a moment feeling like he was trading insults with Elle. “Ironman’s a man in a flying robot suit,” he explained when the woman’s eyebrow shot up, “If you want to back a man in skin-tight spandex then go ahead, but I’m voting for the robot suit.”

“Nadia,” the woman said simply, shaking her head. “My name,” she clarified when he blinked at her dumbly, “It’s Nadia. I want you to remember it when the Captain kicks Ironman’s butt in a fight.”

Unable to stop the grin that formed on his face in response, he just rolled his eyes at her. “I’m Jackson, but when Captain America grows wings and an invulnerability to laser beams, then you can call me whatever you want.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nadia promised with a smile of her own, something about it making him hesitate.

Glancing across the bin to where a salesperson was giving him the same look he recalled giving nerds back in high school, Jackson muffled a laugh against the back of his hand, a stifled chuckle making him look over to where Nadia was blushing sheepishly. Dropping the ‘Captain America’ wallet back into the bin, he flipped over a couple of others to check the icons printed on them, shaking his head as he counted out ones belonging to Thor, Ironman and even the Hulk.

“It’s so strange that superheroes really exist, isn’t it?” Nadia said softly, making him glance up at her again. “Outside of DC comics, I mean,” she explained, “Aliens are one thing, but superheroes and supervillains? I feel like I woke up in some kind of bad movie.”

“If this was a movie I’d like to fast forward to the more exciting parts,” he deadpanned, picking up a pair of black sunglasses with a red streak down the side.

“If this was a movie I’d like to see the gag reel,” Nadia admitted, “I’ve made some hilarious mistakes in my time.”

“I’d have an entire disc dedicated to my screw ups,” Jackson muttered, staring down at the sunglasses in his hands. Did he need a new pair of sunglasses? He didn’t remember if he’d replaced the ones he’d stepped on last year. Sliding them on his face and turning to face the mirror set above the bucket-shelf-thing of scarves, he scrunched up his face as the price tag just fell in the way.

“That’s a nice color on you,” the redhead noted, reaching up to brush the tag out of his face, her fingers lingering way too long. “And they look a lot more mature than the red and gold ones designed after Ironman,” she added pointedly.

“Because I want to walk around looking like a giant American flag,” he joked, making Nadia roll her eyes with a shy smile. Swapping the red streaked glasses out with the purple ones, Jackson frowned slightly and glanced at the logos on the price tag even as he decided on the red colored ones. “Who were the spider and the bow and arrow? I don’t remember their names.”

“The ‘Black Widow’ and some kind of bird,” Nadia suggested thoughtfully, too busy studying her reflection while wearing a black and red scarf. “The black and red was the Widow, and the black and purple was the man with the bow.”

It _was_ kind of surprising to think that superheroes were real. A lot less of a shock than the whole ‘btw, aliens’ thing, but still a bit of a shock on their own. Superheroes were the things of comic books and cheesy movies filled with clichés, they were Superman and the Flash, not a rich guy who owns the company his little brother works for. It was a little daunting, really. If aliens, superheroes and Norse gods were real, then what else was going to just walk off the pages of any fantasy or supernatural book?

Whatever it is, please don’t let it be Twilight-style vampires. _Please_.

“What do you think?” Nadia asked suddenly, striking a pose in the black and red scarf.

“Too much red,” Jackson answered after only a moment’s thought, “Try the purple one. The Black Widow? She was the one with the guns right?”

“Are you kidding me? The Black Widow is the one who saved the day,” Nadia snapped, “She closed the portal when the nuke went through it, if it weren’t for her the nuke would have hit New York city.”

Jeez, someone was a little defensive now weren’t they? Narrowing his eyes at her as Nadia turned to look back into the mirror, the explanation for her attitude became obvious as he spotted the red stain in her hairline, a clear sign of a bad dye job to anyone who knew what they were looking for. A groupie, he was talking to a real-life Black Widow groupie, Elle wasn’t going to believe him when he told her about this. She didn’t believe Avengers groupies even existed, much less believe that the Avengers were cool enough to warrant their own ones.

Oh look, they had Avengers socks, cute.

Moving over to the wall where a shirt bearing the faceplate of the Ironman suit stared out at him, Jackson absently noticed Nadia had followed him as he glanced over some of the hoodies on sale. Clothing with giant pictures all over it weren’t exactly his style, he preferred his clothes to be either plain or patterned, but some of these multi-color hoodies were kinda nice. (Especially the ‘Captain America’ one, despite his earlier comment about wearing the flag).

“Purple is a girl’s color,” Nadia pointed out as he pulled the black hoodie with purple trims off the rack, glancing at the size before holding it against his body.

“I’m sure that archer would have to disagree with that,” Jackson countered, pulling it on and grinning to himself at the fit. “Besides, I make this work, don’t I?”

For a moment he was sure Nadia was going to say no, it was written all across her face and eyes after all, but instead she just smiled and nodded as she schooled her face blank. “I have to admit, you _do_ look good in it,” she praised, something in his chest tightening as he realized exactly what this was.

She wasn’t just chatting with a guy she bumped into at the store, she was _flirting_ with him. And she was a terrible flirt too, lying to the guy you’re trying to pick up? Never worked as well as it did in the movies.

“So do you,” he pointed out, gesturing to the purple scarf she was now wearing. “It’s a good color on you.”

As Nadia smiled to herself and moved back over to the stand of scarves, Jackson pulled off the hoodie and grabbed one of the ‘Captain America’ ones too, hoping that Elle would start wearing that one instead of the ones she kept stealing from his closet.

Hoping to lose Nadia in the crowd outside, he quickly hurried over to the cashier as his phone rang again, making him frown as he pulled it out to see Elle’s name on the display.

“Speak of the devil,” he greeted.

_“That’s the idea,”_ Elle muttered in response, _“I need your help.”_

“Did you forget your ‘products’ at home again?” Jackson asked, smiling guiltily when the female cashier shot him a dirty look.

_“Close enough, he’s definitely a douche,”_ his flat mate snapped, her tone of voice making him hesitate.

“Elle? You alright?”

_“No, I’m not,”_ she confessed outright, _“You remember that man I told you about? The one that won’t leave me alone at work? He grabbed my ass today, my boss is ordering me to go home before I shove his head up his, which is obviously a health and safety violation in a cafe.”_

“I’m not at work, I don’t have one of the cars today,” he reminded her.

_“I know. Just… just can you come pick me up on foot? I don’t want to walk out alone,”_ Elle begged, _“I need my completely straight boyfriend to swing by the cafe for a surprise date.”_

Jackson’s eyebrows shot up against his will at Elle’s words, almost missing the cashier’s voice as she held the bag out for him. Mumbling a thanks and heading straight for the doors, he shifted his phone to his other ear. “Are you sure?” he asked slowly, “I mean, you haven’t had a surprise date with him in like, years now.”

_“I’m sure,”_ she agreed, _“Please?”_

“On my way.”

* * *

“Oh my god, he is _huge_ ,” Jackson hissed as he slid onto one of the stools at the counter.

Jumping slightly at his voice, Elle whirled around and leaned across the counter for a desperate hug. “I know,” she whined against his neck, “I honestly thought he was going to hurt me when I told him I’d call the cops if he touched me again.”

“Yeah, but he’s a _behemoth_ ,” he whispered, “How am I supposed to compete against that?”

Freckle-spotted cheeks darkened in an embarrassed blush as Elle pulled away from him, none of her co-workers giving her more than a pitying glance as they recognized him. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t have to,” she admitted, “Everything’s riding on the idea that he’s not going to start something over a taken woman.”

“I dunno, he looks a little too steroid-pumped to understand more than grunting,” Jackson mumbled unhappily, not regretting showing up at all but still unable to resist milking it. “Definitely not boyfriend material. Oh! Speaking of boyfriends and material, guess what I got you?” he announced, reaching into the bag at his side and pulling out her new hoodie, “And I didn’t even do anything bad to make up for.”

As Elle beamed at him and pulled the light blue hoodie over her uniform, her smile only widening at the ‘cuddly’ size that she loved so much, he grinned back as her happiness infected him too.

“Afternoon Jackson, been shopping I see,” a woman said as she appeared at Elle’s side. “You can clock out now,” she instructed the blonde, “I trust the pretty boy to look get you home safely.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Elle chirped with an accompanying salute, turning and heading off into the cafe’s kitchen.

“Elle told me you needed an electrician’s touch?” he asked as Stephanie turned narrowed eyes on him.

“I called the number she gave me,” the cafe’s manager confirmed, “Got this old chap working back there now. Rosco?”

“If he can’t find a problem then it doesn’t exist,” Jackson assured her quickly, knowing from Elle that Stephanie was quick to anger and slow to fizzle out. “He taught me everything I know and more. He’s one of our best.”

The boss just stared at him as Elle rushed out of the kitchen with her handbag slung over her hoodie-covered shoulder. “We agreed I’d cover your Sunday shift next week, right Stephanie?” she questioned, earning a simple nod as Elle rounded the counter and linked hands with Jackson, “I’ll see you then.”

“If he kills me,” Jackson began simply, “Then tell my brother I still think he’s a little shit. And burn my porn collection before Mom and Dad find it.”

“I thought I told you to stop calling the ‘Riddick’ movies your porn collection,” Elle growled warningly.

“You did, but I wasn’t listening, too busy staring at his arms,” he grinned, holding the door open for her even as he caught sight of the hulk-sized stalker heading towards them.

Letting Elle slap him on the shoulder as he whispered a warning to her, Jackson released her hand and slid his arm around her waist instead. He was so glad he’d decided to go for the black henley today instead of the cream V-neck, there was no way he could pull off jealous _straight_ boyfriend if he was wearing cream, although his new sunglasses certainly helped him look more menacing as he slipped them on his face.

“Ellie! Where are you going with him?”

_‘Ellie?’_ he mouthed to her, making Elle pull a face in disgust that vanished quickly as they turned around.

“My _boyfriend_ is taking me to see a movie,” she lied calmly.

“ _Boyfriend_?” the Neanderthal repeated.

“Three years now,” Jackson cut in, “Going strong. Would be stronger but she can’t find a ring that she likes. Can we go? We don’t want to miss it, babe.”

“Shut up, we’re talking here,” the bodybuilder spat, making him blink in shock as the man jabbed a finger in Elle’s direction. “You’ve been leading me on,” he accused.

“I switched shifts to get away from you,” Elle argued softly, her usual strong sass fading in the face of someone so physically intimidating.

“You were flirting with me!”

“She threatened to call the cops after you groped her,” Jackson interrupted again, gently guiding Elle so she was standing behind him. “That tends to be a pretty big hint that a girl’s not interested.”

“I said, _‘Shut up’_ , you pansy!”

He may be a pansy, but that didn’t mean a thing when it came to protecting his ‘family’. He didn’t build up these muscles just to look pretty… okay he did, they were all tone and no mass, but there were side effects that he capitalized on immediately. And using them to scare of people who thought they could hurt his friends was one of them.

“And she said ‘No’, dickhead,” he snapped, stepping in front of Elle entirely as he straightened his back and shoulders. “So clear off, she’s out of your league anyway.”

And just like that the man’s attention was on him instead of Elle, his eyes narrowing angrily.

“What did you just say?”

“Oh wow. You really are stupid aren’t you? Let me dumb it down for you,” Jackson drawled as he stepped forward, getting right in the steroid-pumper’s face. “Bippity boppity back the _fuck_ up.”

He wasn’t sure what was funnier, the dumbstruck look on the man’s face or Elle’s startled snort-giggle behind him.

Then the caveman threw a punch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there’s the first official chapter of SHIVER, from now on the chapters should all be 4k and shall be posted on Monday’s. Hope you enjoyed chapter 2, eat some chocolate, you deserve it.
> 
> Oh, and btw, I don’t own anything of Marvel’s cos I’m poor.


	3. Break-In

“I’m fine, Mom, he didn’t lay a finger on me.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Jackson fought him off.”

“No, Jackson is _not_ in the hospital, he’s on the couch.”

What? Lifting his head up from the couch’s arm to follow the pacing Elle with his eyes, he shot her an expectant look as she turned to face him, making her stick her tongue out in response.

“Mom, Jackson doesn’t need to go to the hospital, he’s perfectly fine.”

“He didn’t lose! He kicked that creep’s ass!”

“Oh my god, Jackson isn’t four feet tall anymore, Mom.”

Like hell he was! He had a growth spurt thank you very much, he was now the appropriate height for a man of his age and heritage.

“You know what? We’ll talk later, I’m supposed to be calling my boss to tell her everything is fine,” Elle lied, “Got to go, love you Mom!”

“Nice to see the in-laws still think I’m twelve,” Jackson muttered as his flat mate tossed her phone onto the armchair before collapsing onto the couch by his feet. “At least she remembered my name this time.”

“She called you ‘Neal’,” Elle admitted.

“I stand corrected.”

“I told her you were perfectly fine,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “ _Are_ you? That first punch looked like it hurt.”

“Funny,” he deadpanned, “That first punch felt like it hurt too.”

Rolling his eyes as Elle climbed up the couch towards him to grab his jaw, turning his face this way and that as she searched, he waited patiently for her to release him before shuffling up so he was sitting. “There’s no bruise, I checked the mirror when we got home, it doesn’t even hurt anymore,” he admitted.

“He had bruises,” Elle argued stubbornly, “I saw his nose.”

“That wasn’t a bruise, that was blood,” he dismissed bluntly, “Besides, it takes time for bruises to appear, if I have one we’ll probably know by tomorrow.”

Meeting the blonde’s eyes and trying to convey how honest he was being without using words, Jackson waited patiently for her to sigh and slump down against his legs. It’d been awhile since he’d started a fight for her, but it was good to see that she hadn’t changed from her mother hen impressions afterwards. The last time he remembered having to play the part of the ‘completely straight boyfriend’ was when her ex decided he was sorry for breaking up with her and wanted her back. He hadn’t been forced to fight the man (who had thankfully been shorter than he was), but it had been a close thing.

“How did you do that?” Elle finally asked, staring up at the ceiling as he picked up his magazine again.

“Do what?”

“Beat him!” she exclaimed, “I mean, you kicked his ass, you didn’t even break a sweat!”

Lifting the magazine so he could look past it to Elle, he raised an eyebrow pointedly. “I used to box, remember? You would come along and drool over the instructor.”

“So would you,” she shot back, “And you know what I meant, Jackson. How did you win so easily? He was three times your size, at least.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he denied simply, returning to his magazine. When Elle cleared her throat in annoyance, he dropped it back to his lap. “I’m in denial,” he informed her seriously, “There’s no way I can continue ignoring _this_ if I acknowledge what I did, so I’m pretending it didn’t happen.”

Silence echoed through the living room as he stared past her at the window, the tall blonde quietly climbing off him and padding away.

“I made it snow,” he blurted, hearing Elle moving around the small kitchenette. “In the shower this morning. I turned the water from the showerhead into snow. And I didn’t even realize the water was cold until after I’d washed my hair. Combine that with falling from the roof without a scratch and catching a bodybuilder’s fist _mid-punch_? I feel like I’m going insane, Elle, and I don’t know if I want it to stop.”

“Of course you don’t want it to stop,” came the soft answer, Elle returning to squeeze herself between him and the back of the couch, two spoons and a tub of chocolate ice-cream in her hands. “Do you remember when we first met? Our first day of high school, your locker was right next to mine because of our last names. I remember thinking ‘Who the hell is this nerd and why is he standing next to me?’, I was so arrogant back then, I honestly thought I was Queen Bitch.”

“I spent the next four years proving you wrong,” Jackson agreed.

“Oh _please_ , you proved me wrong the moment you opened your mouth,” Elle snorted. “I didn’t talk to you for a week I was so humiliated.”

“Then you sat next to me in English and told me that brown didn’t compliment my skin tone,” he remembered.

“And you told me that red lipstick made me look like a slut,” she finished.

Pausing and glancing up at the ceiling, a small smile playing across his lips, he frowned down at Elle. “How the hell did we become friends? I swear we made it a goal to insult each other daily.”

“You taught me how to relax and enjoy life,” Elle said slowly, smiling back at him. “And I taught you that sometimes you need to tear a person apart with your words to get through to them.”

“Pretty sure I taught you both of those.”

“Oh hush,” she laughed, swatting at him with a chocolate-covered spoon. “The thing is. We’ve been best friends since we met _twelve years_ ago. I don’t care how freakish you get, because you’re always going to be my best friend,” Elle promised firmly, “Besides, you’re basically Elsa with a dick, that’s kinda _cool_. N _ice_ even.”

“Oh. Punny, very punny,” Jackson groaned, making his flat mate giggle, “I hope you’re ashamed of yourself, because as your best friend of twelve years and counting, I’m ashamed of you.”

Finally stabbing his spoon into the ice-cream and pulling out a small chunk as Elle continued laughing, he poked it at the tub with a frown. “Why did you even get the ice-cream out? It’s only four o’clock.”

“I was going to get a drink, but then you started talking and I thought ‘Hey, I want ice-cream’,” she explained lazily, “So I got the ice-cream out. And you’re eating it too because I refuse to get fat alone.”

They sat quietly for a while, picking at the ice-cream and surely ruining their appetites, neither of them needing to say anything to fill the silence.

Elle was right. They’d been friends since high school, and she hadn’t walked out on him when he first started freezing things, why would he think she’d leave just because he overpowered the bodybuilder who’d been harassing her. No matter how creepy it was watching someone of his size catch someone’s punch in midair. He imagined that so long as he didn’t commit some truly grievous crime against humanity (or puppies) then she’d never turn her back on him, he couldn’t see himself turning on her for anything less than successful genocide.

“What’s going to happen?” he asked randomly. “To me, I mean. I have these _powers_ , so what’s in my future, tarot cards or whatever? Do I just keep being Jackson Foster; Electrician? Do I go down the ‘Flash’ route and don a snazzy costume to fight crime? Do I do a Batman and kill my parents?”

“Please don’t, I like your parents.”

“Do I end up on some examination table with my organs showing as they dissect me?” Jackson continued, “Will they target you to get me to use these abilities for evil? Will the abilities themselves turn me evil? Do I just go about my life, acting like nothing is wrong until I die, passing my powers onto my future children who end up committing great acts of both good and evil?”

“You’d be a good superhero,” Elle murmured.

“Bitch, I’d be an _amazing_ superhero,” he corrected with a grin.

“You’d totally abuse your powers though.”

“Already do,” Jackson admitted as his grin grew wider. “Did I tell you I made it snow in the shower this morning?”

Elle’s spoon stabbed into the ice-cream as she froze, eyes flicking up to meet his through her barely-there fringe. “Show me.”

* * *

“We’re not getting ‘Frozen’.”

“You’re no fun,” Elle pouted as she lowered the DVD case, practically bouncing back down the aisle to put it back and continue searching through the children’s movies.

Unable to keep himself from smiling slightly at his friend’s mood, Jackson put back the third ‘Die Hard’ film and shuffled along the shelf to keep looking for something to watch. Even though he’d ended up accidentally flooding their bathroom the previous night when showing off his ability to make snow from water, causing the two of them to be forced to stay up all night cleaning up, Elle hadn’t stopped smiling from the moment she went to sleep to the moment she woke up.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was a teenager getting ready for her date with the ‘perfect’ boy again.

“Not an action movie then,” he mumbled to himself as he found nothing interesting, turning around to study the shelves behind him. “Not romance, definitely not.”

Moving through the DVD rental store just a block away from their apartment, Jackson glanced up at the sight of movement and groaned at the movie Elle was waving about. “You’re not watching that movie,” he refused automatically.

“It’s about dogs.”

“They die,” he said bluntly, watching as Elle’s face twisted in disgust and she slammed the DVD case back down on the shelf.

Huffing to himself in amusement as he moved to the next aisle in the opposite direction of Elle, he hummed thoughtfully as he glanced at the back of a random movie. It’d been ages since the two of them had come by to rent some films for a long night up, long before his powers had developed even. His showing off the other night had apparently helped them over a bump in their relationship that neither of them had even noticed was there, and now they were back to being as strong as they used to be just last year. He hoped.

“Hey stranger.”

Oh shit.

“Nadia! Hey,” he exhaled slowly as he forced a smile onto his face, the red-haired woman smiling widely back at him. “It’s a surprise to see you again so soon.”

Where was Elle when he needed her? It was her turn to play ‘completely straight girlfriend’ for him.

“Do you come here often? I haven’t seen you around before,” Nadia asked curiously, reaching past him for a movie to inspect.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve been here,” Jackson confessed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling when the redhead wasn’t looking. Who was she trying to fool with that low-cut top? He wasn’t trying to be sexist or anything, but surely she had better features to show off than her below average breasts. He didn’t even _like_ breasts and he could honestly (and sadly) say that he’d had ex-boyfriends with bigger ones than her.

“Oh? You like these kinds of movies too?” she questioned, oblivious to the way he was looking around for help.

Glancing at the sign that simply stated _‘War Films’_ , he turned back to blink at her. “No. I’m just looking.”

“They’re not really my thing, but sometimes I find a gem,” Nadia admitted. “My brother loves them, he works over in New York for Stark Industries, and he’s always sending me the titles of ones to look up.”

Wait what? Did she look him up on Facebook or something? Stalker 101.

“I’m not a big fan of war films, they’re always so serious,” Jackson murmured, edging away towards a break in the aisle. If he was lucky she wouldn’t follow him over to the comedy section. “I prefer something funnier, or with spies,” he added as Nadia appeared at his side again.

He remembered being a terrible flirt when he was younger, he hadn’t gotten a date until senior year, and even that was mostly a physical thing. Was that this woman’s excuse? She didn’t look very old, she was probably still in college actually, so it would make sense if she was just inexperienced and trying to work with what she’s seen on TV. Even if he did date women, her ‘game’ was putting him right off, and now he was thinking about her age he felt kind of dirty if she really was that young. He’d always liked older guys, most men his age were practically teenagers with how they acted, the early thirties seemed to be a nice mature age to aim for.

“Good choices, especially when it’s a funny spy movie.”

Oh thank god, Elle was coming. Run soul sister, run!

“Jackson. I don’t care what you say, we’re renting this movie,” his guardian angel in disguise announced as she made Nadia jump in fright. “Although if you want to get one of your movies that has the blue sticker on it we can hold onto them all week.”

Giving himself a split second to scan the shelf in front of him, Jackson grabbed the first blue stickered movie that he recognized and gave it to Elle.

“Sorry Nadia, that’s me,” he apologized as he turned to face the confused-looking woman, “Catch you later.”

“You owe me popcorn,” Elle whispered as he caught up with her.

“Of course we’re having popcorn,” he pointed out, “We always have popcorn.”

“You owe me the _good_ stuff,” she corrected, “Extra butter.”

“Is there any other kind?” Jackson asked innocently as they reached the counter. “Seriously though, thanks. You’ve no idea the hell she’d put me through.”

Elle just sniggered as they rang up the sale and left the rental store at as casual a walk as they could. “Did you see her face when I interrupted you two? If looks could kill,” the blonde exhaled with a wide grin.

“If looks could kill, your mother would be a serial killer.”

“Seriously,” Elle continued, “The look she gave me as we left could have melted ice, or well you know, whatever,” she dismissed with a wave in his direction. “And the look on _your_ face,” she laughed as she linked her arm with his, resting comfortably against his side as they walked. “It reminded me of that time Mom and Dad showed up at home to surprise me, and you had Peter over. Remember? You were trying to play it off as him just needing a place to stay while his apartment got fixed up, and he had no idea that my parents didn’t know about you, so you kept trying to keep him quiet _and_ fend off Mom and Dad.”

“I’d managed to forget about that,” he ground out, “Thanks for reminding me.”

“You’re welcome. What’s the story there anyway,” Elle asked. “That wasn’t the first time you’ve met; I saw your face when you recognized her.”

“Didn’t I tell you about her? Nadia the Black Widow groupie?” he clarified slowly.

“Now you have to tell me,” she demanded.

Sighing, Jackson just glanced over their shoulders to make sure Nadia wasn’t following them or something before beginning to explain, pausing when Elle’s giggling fits meant he’d have to repeat himself. “I’m pretty sure she just thought I was hot and wanted to sleep with me,” he confessed, “She was trying to act all seductive back there and it was cringe-worthy, and back in ‘Collars’ her voice would say one thing while her face would say another. Not that I would flirt back even if I were straight, I dislike her on principle for saying purple was a girl’s color.”

“My Dad wears purple like he’s descended from royalty,” Elle mumbled. “And speaking as a woman, I know when another woman sees something she likes. And she liked you.”

“Elle, sweetie, my hips _sway_ when I walk,” Jackson deadpanned as they reached their building and entered the elevator, “She must have had her eyes closed or something when she saw me, because even your caveman significant other knew I was a pansy, and we both know how small _his_ brain was. And how small his penis was, I blame steroids.”

“I blame metrosexuality,” Elle declared, “All these handsome young men dressing all pretty and nice, how am I supposed to tell the groomed from the gays?”

“You’re telling me,” he muttered, “You know how bad my gaydar is.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you even have a gaydar, I mean, nobody can be that bad at telling if someone’s gay right?”

“Tell that to Nadia,” he pointed out.

“You know, she didn’t really _look_ like a Nadia,” Elle said slowly, “I bet her name is something common like ‘Natalie’ or ‘Natasha’ and she’s just trying to sound exotic or-”

Resisting the urge to pull the hand he’d just slapped over his friend’s mouth away when she licked his palm, Jackson just reached out to point at their apartment door as he looked up and down their hallway. He’d locked the door behind him when he’d left, he always made sure to lock the door even if Elle was still home in the mornings. So for the door to be open, meant he’d either screwed up, or the shards of wood lying on the floor in front of his doorway meant they were being robbed.

“Call the police,” he hissed as he shoved the movies into her hands.

“Where are you going?” Elle whispered back nervously, latching onto his arm as he started for the door.

“I’m going to go see if there’s anyone still in there,” he explained gently.

“And if they are?” she asked slowly.

“I’ve got superpowers remember? I’m going to beat the shit out of them.”

Slipping into his apartment before his friend could argue any further, Jackson listened intently for the sound of intruders, hoping that there wouldn’t be anyone left in the apartment. It would be easier to just replace anything that was stolen than it would be to convince everyone that the bullets they’d fired at him hadn’t bounced off his chest and that they’d actually missed.

Not that he was bulletproof, but considering his apartment was being robbed, he most certainly hoped that he was.

Ducking down behind the counters in the kitchen as the door to his bedroom swung open, he crouched stiffly as he heard footsteps moving out into the living room, an angry male voice muttering something in a language he didn’t understand. As more voices sounded from his bedroom, Jackson glanced down at his hands and frowned.

What did he do? He knows he told Elle that he’d beat the shit out of them, but that’s something he could really only do if there were one of them, any more than one opponent and he couldn’t focus on the fight properly. Even if he could ambush that guy in the living room, he didn’t even know if they were armed or not, something that seemed quite likely. He didn’t want to test if he was bulletproof in the same way he tried to fly. But then there was that, if he was going to use his powers, then he might as well use all of them. Catching someone’s fist mid-punch like he did the bodybuilder’s and then freezing their arm solid would be a good strategy to try, but how would he explain that the police when they arrived? And what else could he do, ask them all to step into the shower with him so he could create a snowstorm to distract them?

Oh hell. He didn’t have the time to mess around, he needed to stop them before they headed for the door and found Elle. Peering around the counter to see the first thief standing in front of the couch, Jackson eyed his sneakers before deciding they would have to be good enough, sneaking out from behind cover as he approached the man glancing through the magazine he’d left on the coffee table.

And he was turning around.

Panicking as he lashed out, he flinched once at the sound of fist striking flesh and then again as skull struck table on the way down.

Huh… well done fists.

Flinching a third time as a shot rang out, one of the windows shattering, Jackson launched himself over the table and dove behind the armchair, swearing under his breath as he realized exactly how durable his cover was. Bullets tearing up the air around him, he tapped into all of his video game skills to wait until the familiar _click click click_ of the guns running out of ammo before diving into action again, scrambling across the floor to charge at the other two thieves. Tackling the first straight into the second, he was glad that Elle wasn’t around to see what happened next as he almost immediately started getting the shit beaten out of _him_ by the apparently highly trained thief number one.

Muffling all of the yelps he wished he could be vocalizing right now, Jackson kicked out at the standing thief (as opposed to the second thief who was still lying on the ground groaning), making him do a little hop to avoid being tripped over. As the tall man drew his leg back to kick at him again, he spared a second for a smug grin as his hands snapped up to catch the thief’s leg, concentrating on it and watching as ice exploded up the man’s jeans causing him to let out a scream of his own.

Wow. Maybe he _could_ do this without testing whether or not he was bulletproof, even if he felt like he’d have a side full of bruises in the morning.

As frozen thief hit the ground clutching his leg, Jackson crawled to his knees and raised his fist, driving it down into the man’s covered face, Thieves one and two down, just number three to go. God he hoped there were only the three of them.

Standing and turning to face the groaning thief, he came to a crashing halt at the sight of a shaking gun being aimed straight at him. His eyes flicking between the man holding the gun and the gun itself, Jackson found himself really glad that he’d left Elle outside, she didn’t need to see this. Whether he was bulletproof or not, he’d almost given her a heart attack when he fell from the roof, so if he ended up alright or in the hospital he’d rather not worry her like that. Best she not see him getting shot.

Movement by the door made him take that back immediately as Elle was shoved into their apartment by a man wearing what looked like some kind of military uniform. As more soldiers poured into the room from both the hallway and the other rooms in apartment, all Jackson could do was raise his hands as more and more guns were pointed his way.

Was he being arrested or something? The men with the handcuffs who were moving closer to him implied that he was. He could feel himself beginning to panic as the thieves were helped up by the soldiers who just continued surrounding him, a really bad feeling twisting in his gut as he saw the way the only standing thief tugged off his black sweater to reveal the same military uniform as the others were wearing.

“Knock knock!” Nadia exclaimed as she strode into the apartment, a gun in one hand and a shiny badge in the other. “Who’s there?” she asked loudly, a smirk on her face. “SHIELD. You’re under arrest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh, here comes SHIELD, a little earlier than I expected but Nadia’s an impatient bitch so there you go. Hope you enjoyed both the chapter and the chocolate you had from last chapter, and if you don’t like chocolate then you have my condolences.


	4. Interrogation

“Can I get a glass of water in here?”

Looking around the sickeningly white interrogation room he was tied up in, Jackson turned his attention to the scientist directly in front of him, eyeing the needle the man was lowering to his skin.

“Did you disinfect that needle?” he asked, watching as the man jumped and shot him a fearful look. “If I get AIDs from that needle, I’m going to bleed on you.”

“If you keep talking, I’m going to find someone with AIDs just so they can infect you,” someone muttered behind him.

“Excuse me?” Jackson demanded, twisting around the best he could when most of his body was strapped to a chair. “I’ll have you know that’s actually illeg-”

_Clink_.

Turning back to the lead scientist, he blinked in shock at the sight of a broken needle, not having expected that even considering the bruises he swore he was already developing on his sides. Watching mutely as the scientist hurried to prepare another needle, his skin bending under it slightly before half of the needle went flying, the thin metal snapping right at the moment he would have guessed it went though. Jackson leaned back in his chair with a smirk. This was going better than he expected, if they couldn’t penetrate his skin, then they couldn’t cut him open. Brilliant.

“Was that a ‘No’ to the glass of water?”

“Do you ever-”

“Enough,” a familiar voice snapped, Jackson’s eyes closing for a moment in annoyance. “Everybody out. Mr. Foster and I need to have a little chat.”

Panic setting in. Defensive Sarcasm; activated.

“If the chat is going to be anything like our previous conversations, I’m going to need a security escort and a doll to show the judge the naughty places you touched,” he said immediately.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Nadia asked slowly as she sat down in the chair opposite him, the scientist scrambling to pack up the toolkit on the table and get out of the danger zone between them. “But you’re not.”

“You think you’re a good actor, don’t you?” Jackson countered, “But you’re worse than my sense of humor.”

To her credit, Nadia was better at torture than she was flirting, not even a glimpse of emotion running through her eyes at his comment. Instead the woman was just leaning forward in her chair, resting her arms on the table and watching him, not saying another word as she tilted her head slightly.

“Did you end up buying that purple scarf?”

“I did,” she confessed, “My niece loved it.”

“Good for her,” he said slowly, wincing at the boring small talk they were exchanging.

“What about you? Did Ms. Fort enjoy the hoodie you bought her?” Nadia asked innocently.

“She says it’s ‘super cuddly’,” he confirmed.

“What did she say about your abilities when you first approached her about them?” Nadia questioned suddenly, still sounding casual as she just slipped that question in there.

“What abilities?”

“Really? You’re going to lie to me?” the woman asked, sounding disappointed with him and reminding Jackson of his old American History teacher when she caught him lying about his homework. “We have the tapes from your apartment, Mr. Foster, we know.”

“Sorry,” he said slowly, “But I think you’ve got the wrong guy, I’ve never taped anything in my life.”

“Well we did, Mr. Foster,” Nadia corrected, “SHIELD put bugs, listening devices, in your apartment after your little tumble on Friday night. We gathered a lot of… interesting… intel from just two days’ worth of listening.”

Really? He imagined that they would have gotten so much more ‘intel’ if they’d just waited for a while. Who knows what he would have done in his apartment, not knowing that they were listening to every word he said.

“So would you care to explain what we overheard? Mr. Foster? Or would you like me to give it a go?”

“I think I’d like for you to give it a go, actually,” Jackson admitted, smiling innocently at her, “You’re such a good actor after all, Nadia.”

Aha! There. A flash of anger in her eyes.

“I have a confession to make,” the woman said slowly, “My name isn’t really ‘Nadia’.”

“And red isn’t your real hair color,” he added.

‘Nadia’ froze, her jaw tightening for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered stiffly.

Just raising his eyebrows innocently, Jackson lounged back in the chair as best as he could, trying not to think about what was going to happen to him. He didn’t believe for a second that playing along with ‘SHIELD’ would result in him going home at the end of the day, he had magic powers after all, no matter how the day ended it wouldn’t be with him going home.

“Tell me, Mr. Foster,” Nadia interrupted as he opened his mouth to speak, “Did you show Ms. Fort how you made snow in the shower?”

“Don’t be silly, Nadia,” he denied, “People can’t make snow in the shower, can they?”

“Are you telling me you’re not a ‘people’?”

“You don’t think I’m a person? You racist. I demand to see my lawyer,” Jackson declared.

“You don’t get a lawyer, Mr. Foster,” a voice corrected, making him look over his shoulder to where… to where a beautiful red-haired woman in slacks and a button-up was closing the door behind her. “In fact, I imagine you won’t need one anyway,” the woman - who Nadia’s face was telling him was the Black Widow - continued as she moved around to sit elegantly beside Nadia, “You’re not in trouble, after all.”

“You spied on me and faked a break-in to catch me in the act,” he pointed out dryly, “Now you’re telling me I’m not in trouble?”

“If you were in trouble, we’d have sedated you and gotten all our information from Ms. Fort first,” the Widow said with the faint echo of a smile. “That will be all, Agent Moore, thank you,” she added to the woman beside her.

“What?”

“I think she said you should leave,” Jackson clarified, earning a glare.

“This is _my_ suspect,” ‘Agent Moore’ hissed angrily, “I collected the intel on him, I seduced him, I brought him in. He’s mine.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

“Your intel was faulty, your ‘seduction’ was doomed to fail from the beginning, and your orders were to keep surveillance only,” Widow said calmly.

“All of my intel was perfect,” Moore snapped defensively, “I saw the perfect opportunity and I took it.”

“Jackson Foster is _gay_ ,” the Widow corrected softly.

“With a capital ‘G’,” he added helpfully, unable to resist.

“If you had paid attention to his Facebook page, you would have noticed the sheer amount of LGBT memorabilia on it, with the most obvious of it all being the ‘Likes: Men’,” the Widow continued, her voice and smile turning dangerous as she stared at Moore. “Now leave this interrogation room immediately, Agent Moore, or else.”

As Moore stormed from the room with a face as red as her hair, Jackson glanced at the Widow who was just inspecting her nails distractedly. “Well that was awkward.”

“I’m sorry about that, Agent Moore has been showing signs of an inflated ego ever since being selected for SHIELD training,” the Widow apologized gently, the woman clearly playing ‘good cop’ like all the movies showed, smiling at him in a way that made him smile back without thinking about it. “We’re a little understaffed after New York, I’m sure you understand. Her orders were only to engage in surveillance of you until we had a better idea of who you were, and what you could do.”

“I can roll my tongue,” he offered, earning an unimpressed look from the Widow. “Or not.”

“While her operation unauthorized as it was, worked to bring you in with only minor injury, it was still unauthorized and wasn’t what we had planned for you,” she continued. “Despite what some people believe, SHIELD is _not_ the kind of organization to kidnap you and your flat mate in the middle of the night,” the Widow clarified, “If you had shown promise, the Director would have sent someone with clearance to attempt to recruit you to our cause.”

His head snapped up from where it’d been drooping down, and he stared at the gentle looking woman intently. Good god, he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about Elle, he’d been so afraid that he was going to end up in pieces on a table that he’d forgotten about his best friend.

“Ms. Fort is okay,” she promised like she could read his mind, “The agent questioning her is a lot more charismatic that Agent Moore, and has managed to make her quite comfortable despite her fear. She’s worried about you,” the Widow agreed.

“Her best friend has superpowers and has been kidnapped by a secret organization who has admitted to spying on them. If she wasn’t worried about me then she wouldn’t be my best friend.”

“So you _do_ have abilities then?” the Widow said smugly, jumping on his slip with a wide smile. “All we had to go on was your miraculous landing, which somebody called in to the police who forward it to us. We managed to get the video off the intersection cameras but they only showed you landing on your feet, nothing else. And your claims of making it snow in the shower were considered ‘unlikely’ until you froze one of our agent’s jeans solid.”

Staring at the woman as he juggled his options, Jackson just sagged down in his chair with a sigh. “Is he alright? The agent I froze. I’ve never done that to someone before.”

“And you still chose to do it to him?”

“He was firing a gun at me,” Jackson pointed out, “And he was doing some weird martial arts shit. I panicked.”

The Widow hummed to herself thoughtfully, “How long have you had these abilities?” she asked.

“Four months, give or take,” he confessed, “I started freezing things the day after New York.”

“And the physical aspects?”

“Didn’t know they existed until I fell from the building,” Jackson admitted with a shrug.

“Why were you even up there in the first place?” the Widow asked.

“I wanted to see if I could fly. I can’t.”

The woman blinked at him in amusement for a moment before standing up, the door behind him opening as the guards filed back into the room. “I want to see what you can do,” she announced, the guards untying him and letting him stand, only to bind his arms behind his back almost painfully. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

Not like he had a choice in the matter, what with the way the guards were pushing and pulling him after the red-haired woman strutting down the corridor. Down disturbingly white hallway after disturbingly white hallway, Jackson soon found himself being shoved into a locker room with a single male guard who had a small pile of clothes in his hands.

“Get changed,” the man ordered, holding out a plain grey shirt. “Don’t worry,” he added as Jackson faltered, “I’ll turn my back.”

Snatching the shirt with a scowl, he undid the buttons of his own shirt, smirking smugly at the look on the guard’s face when he took it off right in front of him. He still remembered back in high school, where the other boys in his year tried to tease him by undressing in front of him during gym class, how he’d always beat them at their twisted attempts at ‘gay chicken’ by simply beginning to strip off his own clothes. He didn’t care about their ‘fragile straight sensibilities’ at all, if they were going to mock him then he’d return the favor.

“Do you want to guess what color underwear I’m wearing?” Jackson asked innocently, his hand lingering near his belt buckle, “Or do you want to just skip ahead to guess whether or not I’m even wearing any at all?”

Grinning at the guard’s back as the man spun around with a strangled noise, Jackson bit back his laughter and glanced over the clothes set out for him. Oh lord, they had to be kidding him, there was _no_ way that he was going to wear _that_.

“Do you have anything that _doesn’t_ make me look like I’m decomposing?”

“How about the inside of a prison cell?” the guard shot back.

“I’ll make it work,” Jackson muttered unhappily, glaring at the man as he picked up the ugly gray shirt and pulled it on, already feeling depressed as he looked down at himself in disgust. Digging through the clothes and nudging the boxer briefs with a shudder, he glanced up at the guard again. “I’m not taking off my underwear in front of you,” he stated bluntly.

“Are you wearing boxers?” the guard asked without turning around.

“No.”

“Then you’re fine. You just don’t want everything bouncing around out there, trust me,” the man muttered.

Ouch.

Struggling into the tight black cargo pants they had given him and pulling on the military-style boots, Jackson cast a mild glare at the headband sitting on the bench and cleared his throat, stepping away from the left-over clothes as the guard turned to face him. Spreading his arms wide to show that he wasn’t armed or anything, he moved towards the door he was gestured too and shot the guard a suspicious glare.

“If I come back to find my clothes are missing, I’ll find you.”

What he did after he found the man didn’t matter, the power of that threat was the act of leaving it hanging. Not that he looked at all threatening in _gray_ of all colors, but he hoped that the look on his face and the knowledge of what he could do would be enough to make the guard behave.

Stepping into a large gymnasium and feeling his heart sinking in his chest at the sight of the obstacle course taking up half of the room, Jackson continued to look around at the training dummies in one corner with a rock-climbing wall in the other.

“I feel like I should warn you,” he called out slowly, “I failed gym in high school!”

_“You missed out by two points and caught up during Saturday school by completing your missed homework,”_ the Widow’s voice countered through the speakers in the room. _“Nice try.”_

“Thanks. Thought it was worth at least giving it a go,” Jackson muttered. “You’ve forced me into this prison outfit, now what?”

_“Oh stop that, it may not suit your tan but you don’t look nearly bad enough to earn that kicked puppy expression,”_ Widow scolded, _“Approach the training dummy and hit it with the strongest ‘move’ you can.”_

“Right. What the hell do you mean by ‘move’?” he questioned loudly.

_“You claim to be able to create ice, so create ice.”_

Oh. Right.

Moving over to the training dummy, Jackson glanced around for a security camera before reaching out to poke the dummy in the chest, ice spreading out from where his finger touched it. “Tada!”

_“Mr. Foster,”_ the Widow began, something in her voice making him think she was rubbing her forehead with a muffled groan. _“This isn’t the time to be playing games.”_

“Of course not,” he called out, “But I don’t really _have_ any moves.”

_“There’s a microphone embedded in the collar of your shirt, Mr. Foster, you don’t need to shout,”_ the Widow snapped, making him glance down at it curiously. _“Don’t touch it,”_ she added as he reached up, _“You snap-froze our agent’s leg so bad that we had to use a chemical anti-freeze just to get him out of his pants, so do it again.”_

_How_ was he supposed to do that? Jackson hadn’t known he was doing it in the first place! All of his ‘moves’ seemed to be ones that he accidentally stumbled across because he was curious and got lucky. There was no instruction manual for his abilities, no tutorial that he could follow or videos online he could watch. Everything he’d done so far had been him just throwing his power at the situation in the hopes that something would stick and it would work. And the SHIELD agent he’d frozen had just happened to be attacking him at the time, so he was blaming the adrenaline for what had happened there.

_“Mr. Foster?”_

Reaching out slowly, Jackson laid his hand against the dummy’s shoulder and concentrated, just kind of imagining it being turned into a giant ice cube.

_“Interesting,”_ the Widow murmured as they watched the ice rapidly engulfing the dummy beneath his hand, freezing the entire thing into a creepy humanoid mass. _“How did you do that?”_

“I just thought about it,” he admitted, “And it happened. Like how I made the snow, I thought about doing it and it snowed.”

_“Make it snow then,”_ the Widow instructed.

“I need water,” Jackson refused, “I used a shower last-” _hiss_ “-time,” he finished as the sprinklers turned on mid-sentence. Scowling up at the ceiling as he quickly got soaked through to the bone, he cast a glare about for the Widow for whichever camera she was currently watching him through. Great, first he was kidnapped because of his powers, then he was forced to show off said powers, and now he was wet. This day was just getting better and better wasn’t it?

Shaking water from his hair and closing his eyes, Jackson concentrated on snow like he had just the other morning, not opening his eyes again until the feeling of water raining down on him changed into the lighter touches of snow landing on his shoulders. Water was still pouring from the sprinklers, but as he looked around him he could see the ‘dome’ surrounding him that marked where the water turned to snow in a circle around him, stretching somewhere around the length of a bus away from his body.

“Happy?”

_“Almost,”_ the Widow agreed, _“Now, run the obstacle course.”_

Jackson froze. “Say what?”

* * *

“Jackson!”

Grunting as a familiar blonde blur slammed into his chest, he brought his arms up to hold Elle back, running a hand up and down her back gently as she trembled.

“It’s okay,” he murmured slowly, “I’m okay.”

“That bitch told me they were running tests on you,” Elle said with a tremor in her voice.

“Worse, they made me run an obstacle course,” Jackson corrected, trying his best not to whine as Elle pulled away with a confused expression. “Their needles kept breaking on my skin,” he added when she stared at him, “They brought me to a lab when I was too tired to argue and did what tests they could.”

If his legs hadn’t hurt so much he might have tried to make a run for it, as it was the Widow and his guard escort had just sat there smirking as the doctors broke needle after needle on his arm before just giving up. Unfortunately, they still took hair and saliva samples, in between measuring his height and weight like that mattered. At the end of the day he was just glad that after a basic physical the Widow had ordered her to follow him again, and had led him back to Elle instead of to a surgery room where they would try to take him apart ‘for science’.

Allowing Elle to drag him over the spartan white couch sitting against the wall, he collapsed down beside her and let her tuck herself against his side.

“What’s going to happen? To us?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson confessed, tightening his arm around the blonde’s shoulders. “This isn’t anything like I thought it would be.”

“You’ve been thinking about this?” Elle asked.

“Dreaming,” he corrected, “Or nightmaring, whatever the right word is. It’s nothing, just a couple of bad dreams,” he promised her when he felt her tensing beneath him.

“You should have told me,” Elle murmured.

“What? Told you that I had a bad dream? It was nothing,” Jackson assured her, “It only happened once and I forgot about it by morning.”

As Elle made an annoyed noise and pulled herself off the couch, he watched as she started pacing, the woman too stressed to stand still. He couldn’t blame her, really, not when he’d gotten them both kidnapped/arrested by SHIELD and interrogated. He was the one with the powers, if anybody deserved this kind of treatment it was him, not her.

“What did they say was going to happen now? Can we go home?”

“You can.”

Both of their heads snapping around to face the door, Jackson eyed the balding man cautiously, watching as he stepped into the room with a disarmingly calming smile that matched the one that the Widow had sent him earlier. As Elle relaxed with a relieved expression on her face, the man raised a hand to point at Jackson simply.

“He can’t.”

“What? What the hell do you mean?” Elle demanded angrily, turning a glare on the man.

The man’s smile only grew as his pointing hand instead reached out in a gesture that he couldn’t mistake. “My name is Phil, Phil Coulson,” he introduced, “And I apologize for any misunderstanding. You will be returned home tomorrow,” he clarified, “SHIELD wishes to hold you overnight for observation.”

“You can’t do that,” Elle snapped, ignoring Coulson’s hand as he held it out to her as well, eyes narrowing darkly. “You have no right to do that!”

“I think you’ll find, Ms. Fort, that we can do whatever we want,” another voice said from the doorway, his turn this time revealing a tall black man standing there in matching clothing.

“And I think you’ll find there are more colors in existence than just black,” Jackson muttered as the man strode into the room. “Which, by the way, is a winter color. It’s the middle of May.”

The man just eyed him with his singular eye, “Agent Romanoff said you were a defensive snarker,” he said unhappily before dismissing him as he turned to face Coulson fully. “Take the woman to her room for the night,” he ordered, “I wish to speak to Mr. Foster alone.”

“What? No, I’m not going anywhere!”

“Elle,” Jackson interrupted, not looking away from the black man. “Go. I’ll be there soon.”

“Jackson!”

“Elle. Go.”

As Coulson quietly escorted his friend out of the room, Jackson was gestured over to the table in the corner, watching as the man sat with his back to the wall and stared expectantly. Finally making his way over to sit, looking around the room and wondering if they were really being left alone, he raised an eyebrow at the man questioningly and got no response. All too quickly he felt himself starting to fidget, the man not moving besides the subtle rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed and the blinking of his eye.

“Agent Romanoff assures me that you’re not a threat,” the man began finally, “I’m not so sure about that.”

“To each their own, I guess,” Jackson said uneasily, something about the man implying that he was just as dangerous as the Widow even with an eye missing.

The man made a noise in the back of his throat, reaching into his trench coat to pull out what looked like a simple tablet that he slid across the table after tapping on it. Leaning forward to eye the video loading on the screen, he froze as he recognized himself in the shirt and pants he was still wearing now.

_Jackson reached out and pressed his palm against the dummy, scrunching his face up for a moment before ice spread from his hand, surrounding the dummy in a shell of ice in seconds._

“Give me a reason to believe that you’re not a threat,” the man ordered. “Tell me why I shouldn’t have you thrown into some isolated prison somewhere under false charges and leave you to rot.”

Oh right… _this_ is what he had expected from SHIELD when they’d first brought him in, _this_ is what he expected from any government agency who found him out.

“I don’t have a criminal record?” Jackson tried nervously, more afraid of this man than he was willing to admit.

A finger reached out and swiped the tablet’s screen, bringing up a list that the man pulled closer to him to read. “Four fights in high school, one charge of vandalism and eleven counts of disrespecting a teacher,” the man read aloud slowly, eye flicking up to meet his, “And two fights outside of high school.”

“I don’t have a criminal record _technically_.”

“Technically you don’t,” the man agreed. “The report for the vandalism charge clearly shows it was an accident, the teacher you disrespected was barred from teaching again for abusing students just two years after you graduated, and three of the four fights were listed as self-defense.”

“Yeah well not everybody likes the gay kid,” Jackson muttered, smiling tightly at the man who ignored him.

“There was an accident a couple of years ago when you were mugged by a drunk man, and your little ‘tussle’ the other day with Ms. Fort’s unwanted suitor. For someone with your particular… ability… your past is surprisingly clean, Mr. Foster,” the man continued, setting the tablet down and fixing him with a look. “As long as it stays that way then I don’t see any reason to consider you more of a threat than I would any other person with superhuman abilities.”

“There are other people like me?” Jackson blurted.

“I’ll have someone show you to the room where you and Ms. Fort will be staying for the rest of the night,” the man declared as he slipped the tablet back into his pocket, “You’ll be woken before noon to give you a chance to catch up on your sleep and will be escorted to the dining area for ‘breakfast’. Afterwards we will find something to entertain your friend while you finish the tests scheduled. I trust there will be no problems with this?”

“Uh, well no.”

“Good,” the man said as some agents stepped into the room, “We’ll be watching you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter was rather difficult to write, since I don't exactly have any experience when it comes to being kidnapped by shadowy organizations who want to know about my superpowers... not that I have superpowers -.-
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoyed this despite that, and next chapter you'll be seeing the fallout of their kidnapping.


	5. Beat Up

“We’ll be watching you?”

“S’what he said,” he agreed.

“But like, are they watching us now?” Elle asked nervously, looking around the apartment. “I mean, they said they bugged us before right? What if there are bugs here right now?”

“If there are then you better start bringing your dates into your bedroom,” he suggested as he sipped at his beer, “Unless you want to put on a show or something.”

“This is all your fault, you know,” Elle muttered, scowling around the room as she stomped over to sit in the armchair. “Could you at least stop looking so calm about this?” she demanded, “I feel like I’m about to pull out my hair!”

“I had my freak out in the shower I had when they dropped us off,” Jackson admitted, “Don’t worry, it’ll melt. Probably.”

Ignoring Elle’s glare, he continued staring out the window, one leg crossed over the other as he fought the urge to fidget. As scary as his best friend could get, she was nothing compared to ‘Director Fury’, as the scientists had introduced him that morning. Whether there _were_ bugs and cameras in the apartment following his every move, or whether he’d go out next week and realize he was being followed, Fury wasn’t a man he wanted to test. Something told him that the man wouldn’t hesitate to live up to his threat and banish him to some prison somewhere before ‘losing’ the paperwork.

“So what now?”

Exchanging a look with Elle as they both said the same thing, Jackson just shrugged weakly. “SHIELD arranged for us both to have most of the week off,” he said slowly, setting his bottle down as he stood, “I don’t have to go to work until Thursday, they cleared it with my boss and everything. I’m a high-level witness or something.”

“Wednesday for me,” the blonde said awkwardly, looking towards the window before looking into the kitchen. “I want to dye my hair,” she blurted out of nowhere, making him glance over his shoulder at her as he leaned against the loft’s windows.

“I thought you liked being blonde?”

“I do,” Elle agreed as she reached up to twirl her hair around her fingers, “But… I don’t know. Suddenly I just want a change. You should do it too.”

“The last time I dyed my hair I left it in too long and it turned bright red,” Jackson reminded out with a yawn, crossing his arms as he turned to face her fully, leaning back against the brace between windows. “Besides, I like my hair color, I wouldn’t know what else I could do.”

“You could go white?” Elle suggested, earning a glare from him that she rolled her eyes at. “Or you could try a blond?”

“Just go,” he ordered, waving a hand at her and smirking at her pout. “I’ll be here when you get back. Probably. I don’t think SHIELD would go to all that trouble to kidnap me, release me, and then kidnap me again the moment you leave the building.”

“I didn’t say I was going to go _now_ ,” Elle corrected, “I might just let it fade back to brown and decide from there. It’ll give me time to convince you as well.”

“Good luck with that,” Jackson murmured, having no desire to dye his hair in the slightest. Turning back to stare out the window, he listened to his best friend’s grumbling, raising a hand to scratch at his stomach absently.

He couldn’t help but remember the dummy he’d frozen last night, the way he’d frozen the entire thing like that, just because he’d thought about it. If he could do that, then what else could he do? What was the limit though? Could he do whatever he imagined? Or was there some kind of rule book that nobody told him he needed to follow. Then again, it wasn’t like he even knew what _kind_ of powers he had. Was it magic? Was it some kind of genetic thing? Or was Elle right, and he really was an alien with freaky ice powers? There was even the possibility that he was an alien with the genetic ability to use freaky ice magic, because his life wasn’t quite fucked up enough for the universe to laugh at yet.

Lifting his hand to touch the nearest window with his finger, Jackson frowned a little and focused his attention on the ice that began radiating out from the point he’d touched, strangely proud of the misshapen snowflake that he’d created on the glass.

“That’s nice and all, but if you could _not_ ignore me when I’m talking at you, that’d be great.”

Turning a pointed look on his friend, the blonde just crossed her arms from where she was sitting in the large armchair, looking too much like a pouting child for him to take her glare seriously.

“I didn’t know you were talking,” he lied slowly, “I thought that was just white noise the SHIELD bugs generated.”

“Well at least they were listening to me,” Elle muttered.

“I doubt it,” Jackson corrected, shooting the snowflake one final glance before moving over to drop back down onto the couch. “They were set up to watch _me_ , after all, not my boring flat mate.”

“I’m not boring.”

“Uh huh,” he agreed unbelievingly, meeting her stare with as blank of a face as he could manage.

“Ugh, I _hate_ you!” Elle exclaimed after less than a minute of their staring contest, tearing her eyes away from his with a vocal snarl. “I’m going to go take a shower,” she muttered as she stood and started towards the bathroom, “You better not be here when I get back.”

“You mad at me?”

“Yes,” she stated simply, arms crossing against her chest again as she turned to face him, the way she was hunching in on herself once again making her seem younger and smaller than she actually was. “I’m not really,” she confessed seconds later, “I’m just a little spooked because of last night. I’m taking it out on you because you’re here, and well because it’s your fault.”

“You think I wanted this?”

Elle’s face softened, “I think that, even if you had the option to get rid of these abilities, you wouldn’t. You’re enjoying them too much.”

With that she was gone, the bathroom door shutting quietly behind as he stared at it, her words hitting a lot closer to home than he was willing to admit.

As the faint sound of the shower started, Jackson sagged back against the couch and let his head fall back so he was looking at the ceiling instead. Now what? Sure he was going to leave the apartment for a bit, give Elle some space to relax without him around, but what was he going to do? He’d been to the mall too recently to go again, not that he felt like he was ‘allowed’ to go somewhere so public and crowded. He couldn’t go to work, or to Elle’s café for something to eat because of the excuse SHIELD gave their bosses as to why they wouldn’t be going into work. He could always just go for a walk, maybe visit the bookstore and see if that book he wanted had gotten in yet.

Or… or he could go to the gym and beat the shit out of a punching bag…

Mind made up as he jumped to his feet, he froze as the door to the bathroom opened to reveal a towel-clad Elle.

“There’s still snow at the bottom of the shower,” she mumbled, “Do you mind?”

* * *

“ _Hello, you’ve reached the Foster residence. How may I help you?_ ”

“Richard?” Jackson asked as he grabbed a pair of socks off the floor and chucked them in the direction of his hamper. “Hey it’s me, how are things over there?”

“ _Things are… interesting, Jackson,_ ” his parent’s butler/caregiver responded with a long sigh, making him tense up slightly. “ _You’re not in some kind of trouble are you?_ ”

“Not that I know of,” he mumbled, “Why?”

“ _Your parents are currently entertaining some visitors,_ ” Richard explained, “ _Visitors from the government_.”

Freezing as something cold shifted in his chest, Jackson shot his bedroom door a look before sinking down onto his bed. SHIELD was questioning his parents? Would they go after his brother in New York next? They weren’t going to tell anybody what he could do, the vow of secrecy he’d been forced to sign earlier went both ways, he couldn’t talk and neither could they. He’d no doubt get a phone call from his parents, wanting to know what he did to get the government breathing down their necks. And he’d have to lie to them too, something his mother would pick up on straight away.

“Oh,” he offered weakly.

“ _For what it is worth, I hope you get the job,_ ” Richard said gently, “ _Doing a commission for the government must be exciting._ ”

A commission? Oh, Richard thought they were doing a background check on him before hiring him to electrician for them. That’s a good cover story, he’d have to steal that one.

“Yeah, the pay’s nothing to laugh at either,” Jackson lied, sliding off his bed and continuing his clean up. “Still, it’s going to be different than the usual ‘the light isn’t turning on’ rubbish I get. I can change a lightbulb with my eyes closed, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to do some rewiring.”

Richard made a noise of agreement as something white fluttered to the floor, falling out of his pants. Throwing them toward the hamper, Jackson crouched down to pick up the card, flipping it over to see a simple _‘Phillip Coulson’_ in black ink above a phone number.

“ _Jackson?_ ”

“Huh? Oh sorry, I was cleaning, what did you say?

“ _Cleaning? You don’t clean,_ ” Richard pointed out slowly.

“I do when I don’t have you around to do it for me,” he confessed bluntly, fully aware of his usual messiness. “Listen. I gotta go, I was only calling to warn Mom and Dad that they might get a visit.”

“ _Call back later,_ ” Richard ordered, “ _I’ll pass you straight onto them. You don’t call often enough, your mother misses you._ ”

“I promise,” Jackson said simply, the butler hanging up on him seconds later with a quick farewell.

Staring down at the business card in his hand, Jackson muffled a sigh as he slid it into his wallet for later. There had to be a reason for the card, and he doubted something like this was ‘standard procedure’ for a secret intelligence agency.

He needed to go, he decided as he pulled his backpack off the back of his door and chucked it onto his bed. He’d pack a couple of protein bars and some water, before going to destress at the gym. It had been too long since he’d just lost himself in his exercise, especially when he’d gone daily before his freaky ice powers kicked in. And considering the amount of comfort food he’d eaten recently, if he didn’t dive back into his routine immediately he’d lose a _lot_ of progress.

When stressed out and on the brink of meltdown Elle preferred to drown herself in a shower before fulling the apartment with baked goods, while Jackson preferred to run on a treadmill until he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He also preferred not telling Elle that he still did that, she’d start watching him like a hawk if she had any idea that he still exercised ‘obsessively’ like he used to. He was lucky that he got away with what he did now.

Picking his bag up and slinging it over his shoulder, Jackson listened carefully to the sound of the shower running in the other room.

He needed to think, and he always thought best when his body was too distracted to argue.

* * *

"Welcome back, Foster.”

“Hey Marsh.”

Nodding at the other man as he stepped into the gym, he let his eyes travel across the sleek room slowly, relaxing slightly when he saw the silver machines all being in the same place he remembered them being. At least somethings didn’t change.

He wasn’t going to have any problems on any of the equipment was he? He could fall from a ten-story building without injury and was needle-proof as well, he wasn’t going to go full Superman and get something like super speed or strength was he? Jackson had no way of knowing what would happen to him next, and that was admittedly a little terrifying. It might even be scarier than his powers themselves, and he’d thought he was going mad when he’d first used them.

Depositing his bag in his locker and heading straight for ‘his’ treadmill, he stuck his headphones in and just decided to go for it. Within minutes he could feel the tension draining from his body, the familiar sensation of the machine moving beneath his feet leaving his mind free to drift away. At least he could use the treadmill for what it was really designed for now, which was obviously running in place while thinking about something deep and personal.

Case in point, what was he going to do? SHIELD was very obviously watching him, having outright told him they were going to, so did he just return to his normal life and pretend nothing happened. Part of him wanted to know how far he could take his powers, but how could he practice without alerting SHIELD and perhaps tipping the scale from ‘non-threat’ to ‘threat’? His bedroom and bathroom were nowhere near suitable for ‘magic training’, and the damage done by both the ice and the melted water would be a little outside of his price range to fix, even though he was considered ‘well off’. Jackson didn’t believe he could just ask SHIELD for a training room, since he didn’t want to know what they’d ask for in return.

And what about that business card? He wanted to say it was nothing, but he couldn’t help but know exactly what it was there for. It was an unspoken offer, a silent invitation, an outstretched hand that he couldn’t deny he wanted to take.

But could he? _Should_ he?

_“I think that, even if you had the option to get rid of these abilities, you wouldn’t. You’re enjoying them too much.”_

Speeding up absently as the treadmill beeped at him, Jackson shook Elle’s words from his mind. She knew him better than most, not even his parents would be able to figure him out that quickly. His father would accuse him of being irresponsible while his mother would immediately assume he was trying to rebel against something.

The thing was that Elle was _right_. He wouldn’t give up the ice, not when watching his coffee freezing over in the morning was guaranteed to bring a smile to his face. He couldn’t say that he’d felt empty before his ‘powers’ manifested, because he honestly hadn’t, but now he just felt complete in some strange way. Of course, he’d give them up in an instant if Elle or his parents were in danger, but that was only if he couldn’t save them any other way.

Pulling his headphones out as Marsh stepped into his line of sight, he barely hid a flinch when he realized what the man was looking at.

“I think it’s broken,” he said quickly, the dark-skinned man looking between Jackson’s legs and the speed counter on the treadmill’s screen in disbelief. “I ain’t running that fast.”

“Jump off then,” Marsh ordered, staying silent as Jackson carefully dismounted the machine. “25 miles per hour is the max these things can take, and these are the professional ones. You’re fast kid, but you’re not _that_ fast. Don’t think anyone is actually.”

Shrugging weakly as the man shook his head, he watched as the treadmill was powered off, Jackson’s phone beeping as Marsh pulled his own out to make a call. Backing away from his kind-of friend and lowering himself down onto a neighboring treadmill, he checked his phone to see a text from his brother.

**From, Neal –** _“U in trouble dude? Stark + shield asking Qs bout u”_

“Yeah, can you bring an ‘out of order’ sign out here?” Marsh was asking, “Got a buggy treadmill. What? Yeah he’s here, no – I – send Jazz out here,” the man ordered, “I won’t have you harassing him again.”

As Marsh continued arguing with whoever he was talking to, Jackson followed the man’s eyes to the blond man by the weights station, mouth falling open slightly as he stared.

Could he even date? With his powers and the way SHIELD was watching him, was he able to date or even allowed to? He didn’t think he could keep his abilities secret from a boyfriend for too long, any guy would be able to tell he was hiding something from them. That and the guilt of such a big secret would tear at him the moment he realized he actually _like liked_ the guy.

Not that he had a chance with a man like _that_ , but still, it was a good question.

“Yeah, dude,” Marsh muttered as he hung up and sank down beside him, “I know.”

“I would sell my firstborn for cheekbones like that,” Jackson confessed bluntly, raising a hand to his face self-consciously.

“Preach,” Marsh sighed, “He showed up the day I last saw you on, you missed him by like thirty. Since then I’ve been running around trying to replace all the punching bags he goes through _and_ keep Luke away from him – that boy’s a bloody menace.”

“That boy’s a bloody slut,” Jackson corrected with a snort, “Then again, if I was as uh… equipped as Luke then I probably would be too.”

“Still. It’s a sexual harassment case waiting to happen,” the other man dismissed, “Or do I need to remind you about what happened when you first showed up here?”

“If he told me he wanted to jump me in the showers then I would have let him, what he did though was called ‘stalking’,” Jackson defended, running his hand through his hair slowly. “Besides, I didn’t press charges. And something tells me that if Luke doesn’t leave this guy alone, there won’t be a Luke to press charges against.”

“I know, are those arms even real?”

Tilting his head slightly as the blond beauty stretched and his shirt tightened across his chest, Jackson shook it off quickly and stood, turning his back on the man to face Marsh. “I think all other men have just been ruined for me,” he exhaled, “And damn I’m a pervert for watching that.”

Marsh just chuckled, “Dude. I’m one-hundred percent hetero and I can honestly say that other men have just been ruined for me too. If I was the tiniest bit queer, I’d be drooling over that.”

Narrowing his eyes at his friend as the man stood with a groan, Jackson threw his arm around Marsh’s shoulder and started off in the opposite direction of the hunk at the weights. “Come on mate, I need someone to hold a bag for me, I feel the need to hit something.”

As the dark-skinned man laughed and headed for the punching bags, he frowned slightly. Marsh was ex-military, a marine who could kick Jackson’s ass with one hand despite being twice his age. If anyone could give him some advice then it would be Marsh, even if he couldn’t tell the man the entire truth or even the small part of it. And if Jackson was seriously considering it – which he was – then he needed the best possible advice. Elle was biased, Marsh wasn’t.

“So,” he began awkwardly, as the other man set up, “You ever regret going into the military?”

“No,” Marsh denied automatically, pausing to take a deep breath. “I regret a lot of things in my life, but becoming a marine isn’t one of them. Not proposing to Jazz when I had the chance, I regret, our relationship almost shattered when she thought I was doing it out of pity. But the marines? I fulfilled my dream, met the only woman I’ve ever loved, I like to think I made a difference. How can I regret that?”

“What about leaving?”

“I did my part,” the man said simply, hand drifting up to touch his ear. “I made my sacrifices and paid my dues. Jazz made her own sacrifices, ten times what I could have given,” he continued, “It sucked leaving it all behind, and the therapy sucked even worse. Jazz and I got each other through it though, we started a gym together. There are days I wake up honestly believing that I’m back over there, but I don’t care. I’m happy, I think I deserve that.”

Jackson didn’t speak immediately. Could _he_ give up what they did? Marsh was mostly deaf in one ear and Jazz’s uterus had been scarred so badly by the same incident that she was lucky to be alive let alone incapable of bearing children. He’d honestly never thought about having kids, he’d known he was gay for so long that it never really crossed his mind. But the deafness? He guessed he’d adapt, no matter how scary it was at first. Elle would wait for him after all, no matter how vocally she disagreed with the decision, and she would happily drop everything to take care of him.

“Jackson?” Marsh asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You don’t have what it takes for the marines. I think we both know that don’t we?”

Scoffing in amusement as he shrugged, Jackson drove his fist into the punching bag and heard Marsh grunt. “It wasn’t the marines,” he admitted, glancing over his shoulder cautiously, “Technically not military at all.”

He could practically _hear_ Marsh frowning at that, refusing to look up at the older man as he kept up his tempo.

“You gotta give me more than that, kid,” the man finally said, “’Cos all I can think of is the CIA or FBI, and no offence but well… you’re an electrician and a damn good one. You’re not cut out for that kind of work. The skills they want aren’t the ones you have.”

Putting more power into a punch, Jackson’s free hand rose up to hold onto the bag, eyes watching the faint circle of ice left behind by his fist.

“It… it’s not them is it?” Marsh asked slowly, eyebrows furrowing as he released the bag and stepped in front of it to stop him from hitting it again. “I’ve known you since you were twenty-one, I know when you’re hiding things from me. You’re not in any trouble are you?”

“Why does everybody think I’m in trouble?” Jackson demanded, side-stepping Marsh to hit the bag as hard as he could. “Maybe I _do_ have what it takes. They think I do, _I_ think I do.”

“Whoever ‘they’ are, they don’t care about you as a person,” Marsh argued coldly, “I do. And I bet Elle agrees with me. Whatever it is they want from you, don’t do it.”

“And if I have no choice?” he countered.

“Then I know somebody who can get you out of the country,” Marsh hissed, getting in his way again. “I don’t want to see Elle come running in here telling me you’re dead, for my sake and for hers.”

Jackson just stared, a little shocked that the man thought that. He knew they were friends, but he didn’t think they were _that_ close. It wasn’t like they hung out or got a drink together, they only really interacted when they were both at the gym.

“It’s not a field role,” he lied softly, not sure about what else to say. “It’s a position as a technician, a more exciting and better paid of my current job.”

Marsh’s eyes narrowed at him, Jackson fighting to keep his face from revealing the truth. “I don’t believe you,” the man said, crossing his arms over his chest before stepping out of his way. “But if you _really_ want to do this then it’s your choice, I’m not going to stop you. Just for the record, I don’t approve of your decision, although something tells me you’ve already made it,” he added suspiciously.

Yeah… yeah he guessed he had.

* * *

Watching as Elle mumbled something into her pillow, limbs splayed across her bed awkwardly, Jackson slowly shut her bedroom door and left her to her nap.

Hand pawing as his back pocket for his wallet, he snatched up the landline and moved over to lean against the windows. Dialing the number on the business card and chucking his wallet down onto the couch, he waited impatiently for the call to connect, a glance to the clock assuring him it wasn’t too late to be making this call.

“ _Coulson._ ”

“Uh, hi?” he greeted awkwardly, suddenly unsure of what to say. “It’s -”

“ _Jackson Foster. I know,_ ” Agent Coulson interrupted calmly, “ _I take it you’ve been thinking about my offer?_ ”

He couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh at the man’s question, the confirmation that he hadn’t imagined it making a weight lift off his shoulders.

“I have, been thinking that is,” Jackson agreed, “Although I’m not entirely sure _exactly_ what your offer entails.”

Agent Coulson chuckled softly, “ _I’ll send a car to pick you up tomorrow at eight,_ ” he declared, “ _We can look over the details properly then, make sure we’re both on the same page_.”

“Yeah… yeah sure. Tomorrow at eight,” he repeated slowly, licking his lips nervously as he scowled at his reflection in the window.

“ _Excellent,_ ” Coulson said cheerfully, “ _I’ll see you there. Oh, and Jackson? The dress code is smart casual but practical, you want to make a good first impression after all._ ”

As the dial tone echoed in his ear, he slowly lowered the phone and chucked it onto the couch by his wallet, turning to stare out the window again. Well… he didn’t regret it yet, so that was something. But would he hate himself come morning? Would _Elle_ hate him come morning because of this? Probably just a little, but it would still hurt more than being dumped for the first time had. Still, he wasn’t looking forward to having to explain this to his best friend and flat mate, he imagined it would be painful.

A ‘smart casual but practical’ dress code though… _that_ he could do. He may not have stayed in the closet for very long, but he still knew his way around one.

Still, it would help if he knew who he was making a first impression on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we go on the plot-train, Jackson's decided (as we all knew he would) to join SHIELD but where are things going to go from there? Here's a hint for you, there WON'T be any giant polar bears wreaking havoc on Washington D.C, so there's that at least.
> 
> See you next time.


	6. Interview

_7:32_

Fingers curling around the half-full mug in his hands, the brown-haired man sitting at the kitchen bench waited silently, watching his blonde-haired quasi-sister search through the cupboards.

Come on… it was like a band-aid, he needed to tear it off quickly. The sooner he did it, the sooner it (he) would stop hurting. And it would hurt, he knew that it would, there was no other option. Elle had made her opinion on SHIELD quite clear last night, before he’d been able to tell her his decision.

Maybe he could just _not_ tell her? Or he could shout it from the doorway before sprinting out?

Dammit Jackson, grow some balls.

_7:33_

Crap.

Opening his mouth to begin explaining, he faltered and shut it again, staring down at his coffee with an annoyed look. His powers must be tied to his emotions or something, because the icy grip fear had on his stomach was only matched by the icy grip he had on the now frozen mug in his hands.

Sighing as he moved to shove the mug into the sink, Jackson leaned against the counter as he watched Elle making her cereal with a sleepy expression on her face. Maybe he should wait? Just until tonight. Make sure he actually had a new job to tell her about before running his mouth. It made sense, and it would be a good enough excuse for Elle when she demanded to know why he hadn’t told her. Especially if he only told her that it was a just a meeting today, instead of admitting that it was technically a job interview.

Or whatever it was that Agent Coulson had planned.

Glancing down at himself, he just smiled at Elle when she shot him a curious look, for once grateful of his usual expensive wardrobe. Nobody who knew him would think twice about him wearing a crisp white button-up and black slacks, they’d probably just assume he was in a monochrome mood even with the dark red sweater he had tossed over the back of his chair.

_7:37_

“Okay, what’s up?” Elle declared abruptly. “You keep looking at your watch,” she clarified when he blinked at her in confusion, “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing.”

His best friend rolling her eyes at him, Jackson just shoved his hands into his pockets and fought the urge to check his watch again. He was normally a better liar than this, he had a younger brother and two nosy parents after all, if he could lie to them then he could lie to Elle.

“What are you… no… _who_ are you waiting for?” she corrected slowly, eyes widening. “You’ve got a guy coming over!” Elle blurted, “That’s why you’re wearing your ‘fuck me’ pants!”

Well… shit…

“You better be playing hard to get,” she realized as his eyes slid shut in annoyance. “That’s what the sweater’s for isn’t it? Halfway through your date you’ll tie it around your waist and hide your ass, tease him a little so he’ll _have_ to want a second date.”

“You know _way_ too much about my dating tactics,” Jackson muttered unhappily as Elle nodded to herself. “And these aren’t my ‘fuck me’ pants,” he denied, earning a sarcastic snort, “These are just my second tightest pair.”

They were also his best pair of formal pants for running in, which was why he was wearing them in the first place. Not that she needed to know that.

“Oh yeah, these pants haven’t had the crotch tucked in,” Elle murmured.

“ _None_ of my pants have the crotch tucked in,” he argued defensively, shifting uncomfortably under the blonde’s stare. “They’re designed that way,” he admitted moments later.

“So,” Elle began after rolling her eyes again.

“No.”

“Who’s the lucky guy?” she continued without pause.

Cue sigh and glare.

“Well?” Elle pressed expectantly.

“You don’t know him,” Jackson denied rebelliously, crossing his arms and promptly glancing at his watch again.

_7: 43_

Dammit.

“Try me,” his best friend demanded suspiciously.

“You don’t go to my gym,” he reminded her simply. “We met there. Tall, blond, and hunky.”

“Out of ten?”

“Twenty,” Jackson admitted, thinking back to the man at the gym. It was perfect, claim he had a date to stop Elle from asking questions, and then when she did he could just say the man wised up and moved onto someone closer to his league.

“You scored a _twenty_?” Elle asked unbelievingly. “ _You_ scored a twenty? I mean, you’re only an _eight_. A low nine if you take off all your clothes, but still only an eight.”

“Ouch. Thanks for that much needed confidence boost,” he said under his breath, fully aware that Elle was close enough to hear him as he pushed away from the counter and headed towards the couch. “I feel so much better about myself now,” he continued as he was followed, “Like I’m not already nervous enough as it is.”

Well… at least _that_ was true. He may not be going on a date with the blond with the unreal biceps, but he was about to go for a job interview for a shadowy organization that had the power to make him disappear with no questions asked. If he said he wasn’t nervous, then either he was lying or dead, and he was pretty hopeful that he’d notice if it were the later.

“Of course you’re nervous,” Elle agreed with a scoff, following him over to sit at the other end of the couch. “You’re so out of your league here it isn’t funny. Well, it’s not funny to you at least, I’m finding this hilarious. No wonder you’re wearing those pants; you need to advertise everything you’ve got just to get a second look from a twenty.”

“I’m not talking about it,” he muttered.

“I am,” Elle shot back.

Meeting her eyes seriously, Jackson just stared. “I’m not,” he said curtly, his face tightening as he imagined he could feel his eyes going steely.

“Gee calm down, Ice Queen,” the blonde mumbled under her breath, backing down obediently as he checked his watch again. “Oh my god,” she exhaled suddenly, her eyes widening and catching his attention, “I can’t believe I almost fell for that you _bastard_!”

“I- what?”

As Elle looked up at him with a dark glare, he felt his stomach twisting painfully as she held up a plain white card. “What the hell is this?” she growled, reminding him of how scary she could get sometimes.

“Agent Coulson’s business card,” Jackson confessed bluntly, not wanting to lie now that he’d been caught out. “He gave it to me in case I had some questions.”

“And did you?”

He blinked slowly, trying his best to look at Elle like she was an idiot. “Yes.”

The blonde’s eyes just narrowed, his best friend and flat mate glaring at him suspiciously. “Why do I find myself not believing you in the slightest?” she asked slowly.

“Probably because you have a habit of jumping to conclusions and convincing yourself that you’re right,” Jackson said blankly. “Just like when you thought I’d stolen Neal’s girlfriend just to spite him,” he reminded, “You confronted us publically about it and then got mad when we laughed at you.”

“You were both half-naked in the girl’s locker room, what else was I going to think?” Elle mumbled with an awkward blush. “And don’t say that you were getting changed,” she added quickly as he opened his mouth to do just that, “Because I still think that excuse was pathetic.”

Sighing and shaking his head, more than relieved the topic had changed, Jackson just played along and hoped it stayed changed. “You were in that drama class too,” he exhaled, “You were getting changed in the boy’s locker room with around half a dozen guys and girls at the same time. Stop making it sound like Anna and I were the only ones in there.”

“You _were_ the only ones in there!” Elle exclaimed, waving her arms about dramatically, “I’d been sent in to find you because you two were taking too long! And don’t think I’ve forgotten about this!” she continued as she caught sight of the business card in her hand again, “You’ve been talking to them haven’t you?”

“If by ‘talking to them’ you mean I called Coulson last night to make sure that you’d be safe, then yeah I have been,” Jackson snapped, suddenly annoyed by Elle’s attitude as he checked the time again.

_7:55_

“I’m going now,” he muttered as he stood, ignoring the way Elle called after him angrily as he stalked over to grab the sweater he’d laid out. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Pulling the apartment door shut behind him, Jackson barely stopped himself from slamming his hand onto the elevator button, pretending not to hear the loud scream coming from his place. It was only when the elevator doors slid shut behind him that he allowed himself to relax, slumping against the wall and running his hand over his face.

Good God… how could he have been so stupid as to forget the business card? He’d _known_ Elle wouldn’t accept his decision to join SHIELD, and she didn’t even know for certain that that’s what he’d done. Hell, he himself wasn’t entirely happy with his own decision, even though it was something he wanted to do. What Marsh had said to him yesterday had sunk in after all, and he wasn’t dumb enough to think an organization like SHIELD would give a rat’s ass about him if it weren’t for his powers. They wanted him for what he could help them do, and he wanted them for what they could help him do. It made sense in some twisted way.

Tugging his sweater on and gently smoothing it out as he calmed himself down, Jackson adjusted his collar and stepped out of the elevator as the doors opened, eyes flicking around the lobby for a second. Not spotting anyone waiting for him, he checked his watch again and moved over to the doors, wondering absently if he’d misheard the time last night when he saw no trace of a SHIELD car waiting for him.

Wait… SHIELD was an intelligence agency wasn’t it? They weren’t going to turn him into a spy were they? He’d be a terrible spy. He couldn’t act to save his life – which he would need to if he were a spy – and with the way he dressed and acted, subtly was more than a little difficult for him. If they needed someone to rewire their buildings or sit around and gossip, then he was their man, if they needed someone to assassinate a bad guy then move along please he wasn’t there.

As a sleek black car pulled up in front of his building, Jackson pulled open the door and stepped outside, relief flooding him when a very familiar SHIELD agent climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door for him.

“Don’t worry,” the man said as Jackson approached, “We’re not going to make you get changed into something _gray_ , so you can keep your pants on.”

“Good. I’m not wearing any underwear today,” Jackson deadpanned, sliding into the car without another word as the guard from two days ago choked on his tongue. “Where are we going?” he asked as the agent started the car up again and started driving, “Or is that classified?”

“Actually I think it’s French,” the agent corrected. “I’m Agent Cooper, by the way,” he introduced, “I’m part of the team that was originally assigned to investigating you.”

“That’s uh… that’s nice?” Jackson offered hesitantly, watching as Cooper’s shoulders rose in a lazy shrug.

“I wasn’t going to complain,” he confessed. “A nice, simple case. Watching you wasn’t exactly that difficult, if Agent Moore hadn’t gone against orders I imagine I’d have had a comfortable couple of months of that before being switched out. After New York I was actually _glad_ for the opportunity.”

“Well I’m sorry your vacation got cut short,” Jackson muttered, glancing out the window.

“Shit happens,” Cooper dismissed eloquently. “Hey. That Elle, is she available? Like, if I were to ‘accidentally’ bump into her in a store and ask her out, would she say yes? Or is there someone else she’s interested in?” he asked, somehow not noticing the way the temperature in the car dropped sharply.

“Did you know it’s always the extremities that affected by frostbite first?” Jackson mused loudly, watching as relaxed shoulders stiffened. “Funny, isn’t it?”

“Right. Out of bounds. Got it.”

“Smart man,” he murmured as he settled back and watched familiar streets going past. “Where _are_ we going though? Somewhere French isn’t exactly a good hint.”

“All I know is the building street and number, and that the name on the billboard is something French,” Cooper defended, “I didn’t need to know more so they didn’t tell me more. That’s how SHIELD works.”

Well, he honestly couldn’t say he didn’t expect _that_.

Not bothering to answer Cooper as he watched cars and buildings zip by the windows, the two of them sat in silence as familiar surroundings slowly turned unknown, their destination obviously in a part of Washington he didn’t know all too well. Even when he was working in his ‘old’ job, all Jackson had done was input the address into the GPS in his work vehicle and follow its instructions, there’d never been any need to memorize the streets unless he started returning often.

“We’re getting close,” Cooper piped up for a moment, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “You might wanna clean yourself up a little bit. The neat-messy hair style is cool, dude,” he explained when Jackson blinked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror, “But just some advice? The person you’re about to meet doesn’t like it, it’ll definitely lose you points with her.”

Immediately beginning to pick at his hair, combing his fingers through it to straighten out the stylish mess, Jackson only stopped when Cooper mumbled out an “Look’s good.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, the amount of times she snapped at me to comb my hair before someone told me, I honestly thought she was going to fire me,” he joked in response, shrugging as Jackson felt the car beginning to slow down.

“That sign says _‘The Greatest Cake’_ ,” Jackson said slowly, blinking at the sign in front of where they’d parked. “In English.”

“The font’s all curvy,” Cooper mumbled as Jackson glanced down at his watch again.

_8:25_

“Head on in, they’re waiting for you,” the man continued, “And if you want to see the light of day again, _don’t_ call her ‘Sir’ and _don’t_ stare at her breasts.”

“Uh… I won’t, thanks?” Jackson assured the agent as he slid out of the car, making a half-wave gesture at the man behind him as he strode into the… into the bakery? What kind of top secret spy organization met in a _bakery_? Actually that was kind of clever, nobody would expect that sort of thing after all.

Looking around the interior of the building and frowning a little at the lack of people, he awkwardly edged towards the counter and promptly jumped as an elderly woman stepped out of what appeared to be the kitchen.

“Uh hi? I’m lo-”

“Jackson?” the woman interrupted in a heavily accented voice, striking him as the ‘strong grandma’ kind of woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he agreed.

“Do not call me ‘Ma’am’,” the woman sniffed unhappily. “Your party is out the back,” she instructed as she pointed at a glass door near the back of the shop, “Your drinks will be brought soon.”

Muttering out his thanks, Jackson headed straight for the door as the woman disappeared back into the kitchen, everything suddenly looking a lot more like he expected it to the moment he stepped out into the back garden. At first glance there were around six armed agents standing guard in various positions around the small garden, all of them surrounding where Agent Coulson was sitting at a table with an elegantly dressed brunette woman. But if watching a lot of spy movies had taught him anything, it was that the opened windows of the buildings around them were more than just coincidences, and that it was likely that there were snipers or something hiding behind them.

“Ah, Mr. Foster, you made it,” Coulson greeted loudly, pulling the brunette’s attention away from the tablet she was taping away on. “Please sit down,” he said as he stood and offered his hand for Jackson to shake, his companion choosing to cross her arms before Jackson could even think of turning to her. “I’d like to introduce you to Deputy Director Maria Hill. Ms. Hill will be the one in charge of your interview today.”

“Ma’am.”

Hill’s jaw clenched at that and she nodded simply, Jackson suddenly feeling rather unwanted as she shot Coulson a look that screamed ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘This is a waste of my time’.

“The training process will be a simple one,” Coulson began, shifting around to face him head on as he casually ignored Hill’s glares and dark expressions. “Phase One will consist of sending you away to the Academy where you’ll stay for up to six months undergoing difficult training until you meet our standards. Phase Two will be a slower paced stage, hopefully here in D.C where you’ll focus on training what you already know and mastering it.”

Six months in an ‘Academy’? Could he really do that? Could he leave his life behind to go to super spy training camp? More importantly, could he leave _Elle_ behind to go play superhero?

“And after that?” Jackson asked slowly.

“Well,” Coulson began with a smile in Hill’s direction, “I was just talking to Deputy Director Hill about that before you arrived. A project that I believe has a lot of potential, considering how well the previous incarnations seem to have worked.”

“Conjecture,” Hill said stiffly, “Neither myself nor Fury agree with you. In fact, Fury seems to dislike this idea immensely, willfully arming a superhuman with the skills he needs to cause havoc and destroy us with.”

“Because the Widow doesn’t have that same potential even _without_ abilities,” Coulson shot back, “In fact. I do believe that the Widow is even more dangerous than Foster, any one of the Avengers could take him down with their _eyes closed_.”

“And you want to teach him how to defeat them,” Hill argued.

“I want to teach him how to _defend_ them,” Coulson corrected before turning back to Jackson. “Things are changing,” he explained, “The world is filling up with people with gifts like yours, people who can… who can build flying robot suits, super soldiers who can bench press a car with one hand, men can turn into giant green rage monsters,” he explained. “And the problem is, not all of them are on our side. You saw the news four months ago; aliens lead by a psychotic demigod in New York. What next? An army of robots? An ancient cult? One man who has the ability to control fire?”

“And who better to fight someone with fire than someone with ice,” Jackson finished, earning a nod from Coulson and a scowl from Hill.

“Well, I’m not saying there’s a man who can control fire running around,” the man reminded, “But to put it in terms that the Deputy Director can agree with. If the Hulk gets loose in downtown Washington D.C, then we’ll need someone just as ‘super’ as he is to control him.”

His stomach twisted. “I don’t think I could take on the Hulk,” he mumbled, remembering the size of the ‘giant green rage monster’.

“But hypothetically you could freeze him into blocks of ice until someone who _can_ take on the Hulk arrives,” Coulson argued. “Imagine how many lives could be saved if we had someone super on the scene in minutes,” he urged, seemingly speaking more to Hill than to Jackson himself.

“It’s a good thing that we have the Avengers then isn’t it?” Hill countered.

“The Avengers are a _global_ response team,” Coulson exclaimed intently, once again making Jackson feel like he was only here as a bargaining chip. “Stark is a loose cannon who’s never liked SHIELD. The Captain only _just_ joined SHIELD a month ago. Banner is _somewhere_. Natasha is often undercover for months, and Barton has his own undercover mission.”

“They’ll return when they need to,” Hill pointed out.

“And when they don’t need to?” Coulson said simply, crossing his arms. “We call the Avengers out for when the planet is in danger. But what about the people? We need a second response team; one we can call out for smaller things.”

Hill sighed, shaking her head and leaning forward. “What do you think Fury wants the Captain to lead?” she asked pointedly, “You know of Project S.T.R.I.K.E.”

“S.T.R.I.K.E is a counter-terrorism team,” Coulson reminded her smugly. “And that isn’t what I’m saying. I’m saying, to deal with super _villains_ we need super _heroes_. Director Fury still believes in heroes, Maria, do you want to bet that the people do too?”

Okay, now Jackson was confused. Did they want him on some kind of response team or a counter-terrorism team? Was he going to be a spy or a ‘superhero’? And as awesome as the idea of being a superhero sounded, this was real life, there weren’t superheroes in real life.

“This idea of yours isn’t thought through well enough, there are too many variables,” Hill denied weakly.

“He’ll be at the Academy for six months, I’ll have time to work out the kinks,” Coulson said simply.

“Oh all right,” Hill exhaled, giving in as Coulson somehow beamed excitedly without changing from his blank expression. “I’ll talk to the Boss; he’ll authorize the mission.”

“It isn’t a waste of time or funding, between the two of us I think he’ll see that,” the older man assured slowly.

Hill just pinned him with a glare, “You brought me here so I’d be convinced enough to double team him didn’t you? This was never a job interview was it?”

Coulson actually smiled this time, sweet and innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he promised, neither of them seeming to notice Jackson’s confusion as he looked between them.

“You’re not going to get to keep this project to yourself, you know,” Hill warned, “They’ve almost finished with the Bus, and you can’t lead two teams at the same time.”

“I was thinking it would be more of a self-sustaining team,” Coulson confessed, “Minimal interference. Only responds to you, Fury and the Avengers.”

Hill stared at him for a moment before she was pushing her chair back and standing. “I’ll leave it with you then. Don’t screw it up,” she ordered Jackson before leaving, taking all of the guards with her.

“That… that was easier than I expected it to be,” Coulson admitted softly as the door shut behind the final agent. “Thank you for being patient with me. Politics isn’t something I enjoy, but it is a necessary evil.”

“No problem?” Jackson dismissed slowly. “What _was_ all of that? What do you actually want me for?”

“It’s complicated,” Coulson hedged as the old woman from the front of the store opened the door with two trays in her hands. “Kind of a pet project I’ve been working on, on the side. Just an idea really,” he added vaguely as a tray was set in front of them both, pausing to thank the woman who bowed slightly and hurried away.

“Like I said earlier, the Avengers are set up to defend the world from a ‘super’ threat,” he explained as the woman shut the door behind her. “They – through SHIELD - have permission from most countries to enter their territory to deal with these threats. But the Avengers are the Avengers, they shouldn’t be dealing with the small threats, they should be reserved for the bigger ones. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Jackson agreed with a frown. “You want me to be on the team that deals with the small threats?”

“In a way. This team already exists, in fact I’m soon to take over as its head,” Coulson corrected. “Did you ever read comics or watch cartoons as a kid? The Justice League? Superman, the Flash, Batman? DC comics?”

“Yeah, _comics_ ,” Jackson stressed, “Superheroes don’t really exist.”

“Ironman does,” Coulson pointed out, “Captain America was the world’s first superhero. There are rumors of a ‘Devil in Red’ running around New York fighting gangs, a man dressed like a spider stopping muggings in Manhattan.”

“And you want a man in spandex fighting crime in Washington D.C?” he realized.

“More than that. I want a man in the spotlight,” Coulson insisted, calmly buttering one of the scones in front of him. “I want a man that people see. A hero for them to look up to. People see the Avengers and know their planet is safe, they need someone else to look to know that _they_ are safe.”

“It won’t work like that,” Jackson refused. “People will hate me. ‘Why didn’t he safe me when I was being mugged?’, ‘He destroyed my car when he saved my life’, ‘He’s a vigilante who needs to be stopped’.”

“There are people like that already,” came Coulson’s argument. “Just last month a man tried to sue the Avengers because they didn’t show up to save him from a home invasion. His case didn’t even make it to court. You would be protected, backed by SHIELD. You wouldn’t be a vigilante; you’d be working for us publically in some kind of agreement. We would deal with people like that, you wouldn’t be arrested and dragged in front of a court unless you actually did something to warrant that.”

“And SHIELD agrees with this? Hiring people as _superheroes_?”

“SHIELD will,” Coulson said simply, “Hill is on my side, and I know that Fury already likes my idea. It’s a good idea.”

“I’m not wearing spandex,” Jackson deadpanned, “No matter how good I look in it.”

“Of course not,” Coulson smiled.

“And if you try make me wear icy colors, like baby blue. I _will_ fight crime naked,” he warned.

“We wouldn’t want that now would we?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huh, so this is where the plot-train took us. Fancy that,
> 
> Anyway. Next chapter seems like it’s going to be the start of a classic training montage, beginning with Jackson leaving Elle behind and most likely ending in Jackson dealing with bruises. I don’t want to spend too much time focusing on his training and missing out on the story, so either way this should be interesting.
> 
> Next chapter should bring about the beginning of a ‘star-crossed romance’ (minus the actual stars), and a friendship that should last the test of time.
> 
> See you then!


	7. Academy

“But you can’t just _leave_!”

Ignoring the shout as he zipped up the sports bag he’d been given, Jackson refused to look in the mirror hanging on the back of his closet door, not wanting to see his reflection anytime soon.

“ _Jackson_! Answer me dammit!”

Glancing at his bedroom door and double-checking the lock had been flicked as Elle started hitting the door, he turned back to his bed and patted the bag on it silently.

Whether Elle wanted to admit it or not, not only could he just leave, but in under an hour’s time he would be. He’d willingly signed the contract with SHIELD, he’d wanted to sign the contract with SHIELD. And although he didn’t really want to go to the ‘Academy’ for six months, he hadn’t needed any convincing since he knew why, it just didn’t mean he had to like it.

It was a little exciting though, even if he wasn’t allowed any personal effects or outside contact until it was finished.

“JACKSON!” Elle shouted as he grabbed the bag and started towards the door, “IF YOU DON’T OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW I’LL-”

“Scream your throat raw?” he snapped as he threw it open, pushing past the blonde as he strode into the living room, feeling strangely vulnerable in a simple SHIELD-issued training uniform. A cheap white shirt and black cargo pants were nothing compared to his usual outfits, but he supposed that was the idea.

“Are we going to at least _talk_ about this?” Elle demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jackson deadpanned, “Are we actually going to talk? Or did you feel like screaming at me some more?”

Stubbornly refusing to look at Elle as he set his bag near the door, he turned to look at her and crossed his arms defensively. He knew she didn’t like this, she didn’t even like the normal military, but couldn’t she see that this was his decision and not hers?

“Don’t tempt me,” the blonde muttered darkly.

“And don’t threaten me,” Jackson shot back coldly, Elle’s eyes widening slightly. “We had this discussion when we were sixteen remember? You wanted me to man up and grow some balls, but didn’t like the way I stopped following you around like your bitch,” he growled, “I thought we were past you bossing me around like you were my mother.”

“You never listened to your mother, Jackson,” the blonde argued.

“Exactly, so why would I listen to you?” he pointed out.

“Because you _did_! You always used to come to me, even if it was only for advice and gentle nudge in the right direction!” Elle yelled. “And now you’ve gone ahead and made your mind up on this on your own! You didn’t even ask me what I thought about it, you just up and decided to work for the organization that _kidnapped_ us! I thought you were bad at decision making when you refused to step up and take control of the family business because you wanted to be an electrician, but _this_? This takes the cake!”

“I didn’t ask you because I knew what you’d say,” Jackson countered, “Because I knew you’d just tell me everything you’ve been telling me for the past week since I told you what I’d done.”

“And that wasn’t a sign that you’d made the wrong choice?”

“It was a sign that I’d made my choice,” he spat, “ _My_ choice, not yours.”

“It’s still the wrong one to make,” Elle said softly.

“It wasn’t when I made it,” Jackson corrected bluntly, “And it still isn’t now. Maybe I’ll regret it halfway through training when I’m being woken up at ass o’clock in the morning to run obstacle courses in the rain, but until then your opinion doesn’t matter.”

“We’ve been friends for twelve years,” Elle began.

“And if you’re willing to toss that aside over me joining SHIELD but not over me being a super powered freak, then maybe you need to reevaluate your priorities,” Jackson interrupted.

“If you’re willing to choose SHIELD and your ‘super powers’ over me, then maybe you’re right.”

“I’m not choosing _anyone_ over you!”

“Then why are you leaving!” Elle demanded, Jackson faltering as he finally caught the tearful note in her voice. “Why are you leaving me here while you run off to go play superhero?”

“Elle,” he exhaled as he stepped forward, flinching as she herself flinched away from him. “I’m not leaving you. I’m going to a training facility for six months, and then I’m coming right back. It’s in my contract, I’m stationed here in D.C, they can’t relocate me without my permission.”

“And when you get killed?” Elle asked weakly.

“Then I hope I died protecting you,” Jackson confessed simply, making his friend freeze. “What do you think I’m doing this for? You know me, Elle, and you know that with SHIELD’s training I can protect you and others in ways that only _I_ can. What kind of person would I be, to have the ability to help save lives but refuse to out of some selfish desire?”

“You wouldn’t be you,” the blonde sniffed, darting forward as he spread his arms. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to go either,” he admitted as she clung to him, “But I have to.”

Letting her go as she pulled away from him, Jackson stared up at her as she shook her head. “I don’t forgive you for going,” she declared tightly, “Not until you come back in one piece.”

“I guess I’ll have to come back in one piece then huh?” he promised, twisting his wrist to see his watch before slowly undoing it. “Do you remember where I got this thing?” he asked casually, “Grandpa gave it to me when I came out, just a month before his heart attack. I’ve worn it ever since.”

“Don’t,” Elle warned, “I know what you’re going to do. And don’t.”

“I’m not allowed to have things like this at the Academy,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her interruption, “And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to bring it in case it got damaged.”

“No,” Elle hissed as Jackson caught her arm and pulled her closer, beginning to wrap it around her own wrist. “You promised to give it to your husband when you married,” she whined, “You swore you’d keep it safe, that you’d pass it down the family.”

“Yeah well, I ain’t found a guy who can stand me yet, have I?” he joked as he tightened the strap. “You’re my sister. My will already states you get everything I have if something happens to me, so why not just ask you to hold onto this a little early?”

“Because you’re not dying?” Elle suggested as she automatically tried to undo the straps.

“Elle,” Jackson cut in firmly, politely ignoring the tears forming in her eyes. “Look after it for me. I’ll be back for it in six months.”

“I hate you,” she whispered.

“I’ll be back in six months,” he replied simply, pressing a kiss to her temple as he realized that this was the last time he’d see her for that long. “Don’t forget to feed the fish.”

Slipping past her and slinging his bag over his shoulder, Jackson just smiled at her as he backed towards the door. “On that note, buy some fish while I’m gone. Or a puppy, everybody loves puppies.”

“You’re allergic to dogs,” Elle countered, making him shrug.

“Then surprise me.”

* * *

“So you’re the special little snowflake that Director Fury made us take in at the last second then?”

Snowflake? Was that a coincidence or did that mean they knew what he could do? Coulson had already told him to keep his powers a secret from anybody who didn’t already know, something about boats leaking water or something like that.

“Don’t answer that, I don’t care,” the tall man in front of him dismissed lazily, waving a huge meaty hand in a shooing motion. “We’ve got that Grant guy last minute too so at least you’re not going to be sitting alone when everybody pairs up. Just don’t think you’re special because you got in at the Director’s order, you won’t last long with an ego around here, trust me.”

As the man jerked his head towards the door and started off, Jackson hurried after him, cursing his shorter legs as he had to move extra just to stay even with the man.

“I’m told you have no combat experience, but that you’re some kind of freak with some kind of freakish power,” the man shot Jackson a wary look from the corner of his eyes. “As long as you keep it to the restricted areas and don’t even think about using it on me, then once again I don’t care. It’s above my pay grade and that’s all I need to know, my job is to train you to fight, not hold your fucking hand.”

What a nice fellow…

“Traditionally our instructors train groups of ten, but this time I’m taking in a group of twelve because you and this Grant fellow are to be fast-tracked through the system,” the man continued, leading Jackson down a series of corridors until he was well and truly lost, standing outside a door simply labelled _‘Echo’_.

“You and the rest of your team are obviously called ‘Echo’,” the instructor admitted as he threw open the door to reveal another hallway with doors on both sides, the one on Jackson’s left named _‘Echo One/Echo Two’_ while the one on his right was _‘Echo Three/Echo Four’_. “We had to convert the storage room into a bedroom for you and Echo Eleven, but it’s the same size as the other rooms so quit your complaining and suck it up, Twelve,” the man ordered.

He was sharing a room with ‘Echo Eleven’? Oh thank God, Jackson had been a little afraid he’d have to sleep in one of those huge barracks he always saw in war movies. He could handle sharing a room with just one guy, he’d expected something like that anyway.

“I’ll be back at 1100 hours for orientation,” the instructor finished bluntly, jabbing a finger at the digital clock on the wall that blinked a simple red _‘10:23’_. “You are not to leave Echo wing until I return. Get to know the rest of Echo, your life is in their hands and vice versa.”

And with that Jackson was left standing in front of the door named _‘Echo Eleven/Echo Twelve’_ , the instructor slamming the main door shut behind him without a care for the noise. Standing there awkwardly as a couple of heads stuck out of opening doors, his bag still slung over his shoulder, he smiled nervously at the other ‘Echoes’ as they eyed him curiously.

“Huh,” the man from _‘Echo Five/Echo Six’_ hummed, glancing over his shoulder to his roommate. “Chris, this guy is even skinnier than you.”

With an annoyed “Fuck off, Five,” drifting out of the room, Jackson quickly turned to face his own door, knocking once before swinging it open to reveal a room only a little smaller than his bedroom back in D.C.

“So you’re Eleven?” ‘Five’ asked as he appeared at Jackson’s door.

“Twelve,” he corrected, remembering what the instructor had called him. “Isn’t Eleven here yet?”

“Nah. Half of us aren’t,” Five denied, leaning against the door and shrugging his free shoulder lazily. “I’d start unpacking now, if I were you,” he suggested, nodding towards the tall floor-to-ceiling _‘12’_ dresser facing the bed in the _‘12’_ half of the room. “I don’t know if this is anything like the police academy but they’ll probably do an inspection while we’re on orientation.”

“Right,” Jackson murmured, inspecting the waist-height drawers and the small wardrobe above them.

“You’re a total scrub aren’t you?” Five realized, “You’ve never done this before,” he clarified when Jackson frowned at him. “The look on your face reminds me of when I first started cop training. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it quickly. Or you might not, and you’ll wash out instead,” he added with a frown towards the floor, “But you’ve got the rest of us to help you through it, so you should be fine.”

“I hope so,” Jackson admitted. He was stubborn enough that he’d probably get through it out of sheer force of will, refusing to give in and ‘wash out’ like a coward even though he’d want nothing more. He guessed it’d all depend on how intense the training actually was. Coulson had promised that it was harder than he thought but not as hard as he’d assume it was.

Someone said something from the hallway, their voice too muffled for him to make out.

“I don’t know, I was about to ask him,” Five answered absently. “What _is_ your name Twelve? From what One and Three say, we’re supposed to call each other by our call signs when on duty, but we’re allowed to use our real names when we’re in here and shit. I’m Rick, by the way.”

“Uh, Jackson,” he introduced slowly.

“Twelve is Jackson,” Five – Rick – repeated immediately for the person outside the room.

“I’m Eight,” a black man greeted, head popping up over Rick’s shoulder and making the man move so the shorter Eight could be seen. “But call me Declan. Seven’s napping but his name is Perry, it sounds French but he’s a walking Mexican stereotype so try not to mention gardening around him.”

“I thought Seven said he was from Spain,” Rick said with another frown.

“Same shit,” Declan waved away the correction. “What about you? Where’re you from, Jack?”

“Son.”

“What?”

“Jack _son_ ,” he corrected, “My father’s Jack.”

“Your father’s name is ‘Jack’, and he named his son ‘Jackson’?” Rick asked slowly, staring at Jackson like he had two heads.

“My brother’s name is ‘Neal’, which is my dad’s middle name,” he confirmed, “He’s the arrogant sort.”

“Yeah, I could tell,” Rick exhaled.

“But where are you from?” Declan repeated, “Are you American or what?” he pressed, Rick looking uncomfortable at the line of questioning.

What the hell? Did it _matter_ if he were American or not? Would SHIELD even hire someone who wasn’t legally ‘American’? They were a spy agency, after all, they’d need to be careful about being infiltrated by other countries.

“Yeah, yeah I am,” he answered when Rick mouthed the word _‘Lie’_ at him quickly.

“Good, good,” Declan said simply, nodding a couple of times before wandering out of Jackson’s room.

Rick peered out after him for a moment before slipping into the room. “Sorry I didn’t get the chance to warn you,” he whispered, “But you _cannot_ tell him the truth about that. You heard what he said about Perry, and he almost got into a fight with Jamie – Nine – when he found out his parents immigrated from Japan. Honestly though, my Mom moved to the States from Germany when she was pregnant with me,” he explained quietly.

“My great grandmother’s family moved here from Denmark because of World War Two,” Jackson confessed, “But technically I _am_ American.”

“Same,” a voice from the doorway said, making his head snap around to see the twenty from the gym stepping into the room, “But before that my family were Irish.”

“Well keep that to yourself around Declan, around Eight,” Rick warned, “He’s a bit of a dick. Thinks he’s the only ‘true American’ here because ‘his people’ where the ‘ones who built the country up from the ground’. His ancestors were slaves,” he clarified for the two of them.

Snorting as the twenty – or that would be Eleven since he was dumping his bag on Eleven’s bed – shook his head slowly, Jackson finished packing his pants away and eyed the bag thoughtfully.

“Just shove it under your bed in the corner,” Rick instructed, “I’m Rick, by the way, call sign ‘Five’.”

“Steven Grant, call sign ‘Eleven’,” the blond introduced, shaking Rick’s hand and turning to offer it to Jackson too. “Do we know each other? I recognize you from somewhere.”

“Jackson,” he answered, shaking the strangely soft calloused hand. “There are pictures of me at the gym.”

Understanding flashed through blue eyes, “You’re the one on the treadmill flipping off the camera,” Steven realized in amusement. “Marshal talks about you a lot.”

“You say ‘talk’, but I know you mean ‘complain’,” Jackson deadpanned, making the blond smile.

“A little,” he admitted, turning back to his bag and beginning to unpack with an efficiency that had Rick nodding in approval.

“You two go to the same gym? At least you’ll know each other then, I got separated from my friend when I signed up for this, she’s over in Alpha wing,” Rick mourned as he headed from the door. “See you dudes later; I want to make sure I’m all set before orientation begins.”

“So… ‘Twelve’ right?” Steven asked, casting a look towards the door before lowering his voice as Jackson sat on his bed. “Want to tell me why SHIELD is still watching me even though I’m here?” he demanded a little coldly.

He frowned slightly, glancing at the door as well before turning back to Steven. “What?”

The blond shot him a dark look, “I get you’re just doing your job, but I’m getting a little sick of SHIELD following me around like I’m an invalid. Marshal’s stories about you? A little too forced to be true, and you only showed up at the gym a week ago yet he claims to have known you since you were a kid,” he explained, sighing loudly and combing his hand through his hair. “Listen, I’m trying to get used to it all, and it’s hard to do when every instinct I have is screaming at me that I’m being followed,” he apologized awkwardly, “Can’t you talk to your handler about giving me some space?”

Staring at the uncomfortable looking man as he quickly turned back to finish unpacking, Jackson looked at the door in the hopes someone would come through and distract them from this conversation.

“I got dumped,” he blurted when Steven turned back and crossed his arms expectantly. “Rather brutally, so I stopped going to the gym and started eating comfort food. It took me around a month to get over it and head back in, by then I’d already been approached by SHIELD for a job which I only accepted last week.”

“Uh huh,” Steven agreed unbelievingly, “And Marshal?”

“I don’t know. What stories did he tell you?” Jackson asked, uncertain about why Marsh would sound ‘forced’.

“He was apologizing for that guy, Luke,” Steven muttered, face heating up in a faint blush as he no doubt remember how forward the other man was. “He told me about how you ended up threatening to bring in a lawyer because you were straight and not interested. Then the next day he said you hit him a couple of times instead.”

What? That’s not what happened, at _all_. And straight? What kind of bullshit was that? Oh... _oh…_

“It was Jason who brought lawyers into it, not me,” Jackson corrected slowly, choosing his words carefully, “I’m the one who punched him in the supermarket. Luke isn’t a subtle person, you need to outright tell him you’re not interested, or he won’t realize you’re saying no.”

“Right. What about the story about you and Isaac then?” Steven questioned accusingly.

Isaac… another person that Jackson had slept with. What was Marsh doing? Giving Steven a list of every man that Jackson had ‘gone the distance’ with?

“What did he say happened?”

“I’ve no idea,” Steven claimed, “He kept avoiding the end of the story after Isaac knocked you out in the ring, but he kept starting to tell me about it like he’d forgotten he wasn’t telling me it.”

Probably because the end of the story was Marsh walking in on Isaac ‘making it up’ to Jackson in the gym’s infirmary.

“Probably because what happened after was _really_ embarrassing for me,” Jackson lied.

“Peter?”

Oh come on, he’d… wait _had_ he slept with a guy named Peter? He couldn’t remember, had he really had sex with that many guys that he’d started forgetting their names? He wasn’t the kind of person to have random one-night stands, but that didn’t mean he only put out to guys who ‘put a ring on it’.

“I’ve no idea who Peter is,” he admitted.

“Peter? Or was it Paul?” Steven asked with a confused frown.

“I work with a guy named ‘Paul’,” Jackson suggested, “I ended up bringing him to the gym and getting him set up. He dated Luke for a couple of months until he found out he was a slut and dumped him.”

Or rather, he’d dated Luke for a couple of months until he found out that Jackson was his boyfriend’s ex and left in a huff. Overdramatic bastard.

“You’re not SHIELD?” Steven asked slowly, looking both hopeful and embarrassed.

“Technically I am,” Jackson corrected, gesturing at the room they were in. “But I’m not following you. SHIELD actually followed me around for a while before approaching me with the job offer, so I know what you’re talking about though. They _kidnapped_ me, to offer me this job,” he explained, earning an amused look on his face.

“They woke me up from a coma,” Steven countered, pulling a face. “I’m sorry. It’s just… PTSD, or something. It’s why Marshal and I were talking in the first place, he recognized it.”

Someone knocked on the doorframe, an Asian man who Jackson was assuming was ‘Jamie’ waving at them awkwardly. “Hey, I’m Jamie. Number Nine,” he greeted, “Two things. Orientation is in ten minutes, so make sure you’re ready. And second,” he paused and glanced down the hall, “You’re not as quiet as you think you are. Corey and I could hear most of what you said from across the hall, I don’t know about the others though. Just shut the door next time.”

Shit.

“Sorry,” Steven apologized as Jackson’s ears heated up.

“S’fine. Just… you’re not the only guy with PTSD here,” Jamie confessed, “If you ever need to talk, I’ve been through it too.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Steven muttered, clearly just being polite as he turned and busied himself with folding up his bag.

Glancing over at Jamie, Jackson’s jaw tightened as the man shot him a pointed look before miming jacking off, the gesture practically screaming _‘I know’_. Relaxing only when the man winked and pressed a finger to his lips with a smirk, he rolled his eyes back at him as he realized the shorter man had picked up on the subtext of Steven’s accusations.

“So, Steven was it?” Jamie continued.

“Just Steve,” the blond corrected quickly, kicking his bag under his bed and turning back to face them now he’d composed himself.

“Right. I think you’re the last one to join us, but apparently we’ll all be formally introduced during orientation, so don’t worry about being late,” the man explained, “And… you’re Jack right?”

“Jackson.”

“Right, your dad was Jack wasn’t he, I couldn’t really hear you through my door,” Jamie apologized, “Still. Get ready, Bossman will be getting here soon.”

“Jackson; Son of Jack,” Steve repeated quietly, earning a fake glare. “Sorry. And uh, I’m sorry, about what I said before. I just, it’s not easy adapting to civilian life with SHIELD breathing down your neck,” he explained.

“It’s fine, you had your reasons,” Jackson dismissed before pausing, “Did we need to bring anything for orientation? I don’t think the guy who brought me here mentioned it.”

“I was only told I wouldn’t be hurt too much,” Steve denied, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Should be fun.”

* * *

“You’re vegetarian? How the hell does that work? In the army you eat what you’re given and don’t complain.”

That was true, there were times he remembered eating mouldy bread because they simply had nothing else. Both during the depression and during the war. He’d not had to eat like that often though, what with Bucky going all mother hen on him and slipping Steve the healthier food while he ‘took one for the team’.

“Because _you_ were in the army?” Perry asked casually, smirking smugly as Declan just scowled. “I choose not to eat meat because I disagree with the process used to kill the animals. As long as I get a choice, I’ll choose the vegetarian option,” he explained as he gestured to his salad, “If I’m not given a choice I’ll eat the meat, because I’m overly sensitive, not suicidal.”

“Then you’re not really a vegetarian,” Declan argued stubbornly, reminding Steve of the horrible old man who’d lived in the apartment next to him when he was younger, constantly yelling and hating everyone because he could. “Vegetarians don’t eat meat. You do.”

“Would you rather I starved myself?” Perry questioned.

“Of course not!” Declan exclaimed, before dropping his voice to say “I wouldn’t be so lucky,” just loud enough to be heard.

Perry jerking in place as someone kicked him to prevent an argument from starting out, Mark (either Echo Two or Echo Four, Steve didn’t remember which) cleared his throat and leaned forward. “So, where is everybody from? Career-wise, I mean?” he asked curiously, looking up and down the table at everyone.

Here was the first lie then. When Fury had forced Steve to attend the Academy to get back what he’d forgotten and learn what he’d never been taught back in the 40’s, he’d been clear about what Steve could and couldn’t tell other people. Number one of those things was that he was Steve Rogers, hence his ‘undercover’ name of Steven Grant. The second of those things was that he was Captain America, and the third of them being that he was a genetically modified super soldier who could take down the rest of his team with one hand tied behind his back

As a series of answers came up from around the table, Steve felt himself relaxing a little at the knowledge that almost half of his team of twelve were ex-military. Rick and Corey were cops who caught SHIELD’s attention. Declan was a private security guard. Perry had been an army medic before retiring to become a full-time doctor. Adam and Chris had been in the FBI together before transferring for different reasons. Leaving Sebastian and Steve’s roommate Jackson (who Steve still didn’t trust despite the man’s claims earlier) as the only non-military or law enforcement based people there, with Sebastian having worked for Hammer Tech while Jackson…

“You’re an electrician? Like… an army tech boy?”

“An electrician, like you need your apartment re-wired because it was built around a hundred years ago,” Jackson corrected slowly, Steve eyeing the other man cautiously as he spoke.

“And SHIELD accepted your application?” Jamie asked. “I mean, I get that SHIELD needs PR people after New York, but an electrician? Do they really need people to stand there and say ‘Did you try turning it off and on again?’?”

“That would be I.T,” Rick corrected absently, Steve twitching at the words he’d heard often when trying to ask I.T for help with his phone. (Who needed that many apps on their phone? He’d only been trying to open the alarm clock, and somehow he’d ended up talking ‘selfies’).

“Have you _seen_ the Triskelion? They’d need to have electricians about to make sure everything was running smoothly,” Adam cut in, “Imagine if they lost power and had to bring in contractors to fix everything, they’d need to do a background search on all of them, watch over them twenty-four seven to make sure they kept silent. It’d be easier to hire their own ones and keep them on the clock.”

“They’ve got Mark though,” Declan pointed out.

“I fix jets, not powerlines,” the dark-skinned man corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“If you say so,” Declan muttered with a snort, “So Richard.”

“Yeah?” two men answered simultaneously.

“New rule,” Jamie declared, “Echo Five is Rick, Echo One is Richard. Deal?”

“I hate being called ‘Rick’ anyway” ‘Richard’ agreed as the other one nodded.

“Anyway, Richard. Why did _you_ join SHIELD? I thought you cops were happy where you were, shooting black people and shit like that?” Declan asked bluntly, an awkward silence echoing across the table after that.

Steve had heard about that, Natasha had helpfully explained it all to him on one of her ‘casual’ visits after New York.

“I’ve never actually shot anybody before,” Rick corrected slowly, “Why did _you_ join SHIELD? You get sick of sitting around collecting welfare checks?”

“I joined SHIELD because it’s about time that we had a black man in a position of power.”

“I thought Obama was black?” Steve asked quietly, confused about how he could have gotten it _that_ wrong.

“He is,” Mark agreed.

Oh.

“He’s only half- _African American_ ,” Declan corrected rudely.

“The Director of SHIELD is black,” Jackson pointed out, Steve faltering as he watched the man from the corner of his eye.

Fury was paranoid, paranoid enough that not just anybody knew he was the Director of SHIELD, especially not some ‘electrician’. It was looking more and more likely that Jackson was really an agent sent to watch him, as if Steve hadn’t already known that his ‘neighbor’ in New York had been one too.

“He is?” Corey asked curiously from beside Steve.

Steve made a noise of agreement. “And so is the ‘War Machine’. I read about him,” he added quickly, not wanting to admit he’d actually met the guy.

Declan just scoffed and quickly changed the subject, everybody around him exchanging a look that said the man wouldn’t make it through training. Steve was all for teamwork, and accepting that everybody was different, but a man like that wouldn’t have lasted a day in his Howling Commandos.

As small talk continued to make its way around the table, Steve poked at his food with his fork, glancing around at the rest of ‘Echo Team’ thoughtfully.

These people were going to be his only friends for the next six months. They’d do everything together, from training to eating to - most likely – bleeding. He was going to get to know them a lot more than he would ever want to – even Jackson the Spy and Declan the Racist – and they were going to get to know more about him than he was comfortable with them knowing.

And at the end of the day, he was going to lie to them through his teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, is there any doubt among any of you lovelies that Declan is the appointed ‘Everybody hate this guy’ character that brings everybody together? He’s literally a combination of the worst traits possible on purpose, but does he have a soft side and something to redeem his character? No, probably not, but he may turn out nicer than I thought…  
> Also, sorry about Steve’s rather confrontational well, confrontation with Jackson. But this Steve is still kind of in the same ‘Avengers’ mindset he was in for the movie, so he’s still the ‘Man out of Time’ and hasn’t yet relaxed into himself like he had in CA:TWS.
> 
> Next chapter we’ll cue the montage.
> 
> And just in case you got just as lost as I did while writing this…  
> ECHO TEAM: One (Richard). Two (Sebastian). Three (Adam). Four (Mark). Five (Rick). Six (Chris). Seven (Perry). Eight (Declan). Nine (Jamie). Ten (Corey). Eleven (Steve ‘Captain America’ Rogers). Twelve (Jackson ‘Main Character’ Foster).
> 
> I’ll start using their real names more often in the next chapters, but for this one they’re a mixture of name and call sign because Jackson/Steve don’t know them well enough.


	8. Training

“Ow.”

“Pass the salt. Thanks.”

“Did anyone see that guy at the end of the hall? How the hell can a dude bend like that without crushing his junk?”

“Ow.”

“Hey Jamie, do you think you can bend like that? You’re flexible right?”

“I’m Asian, you racist, we’re not all flexible.”

“What does your race have to do with it? I’m asking cos you can do the splits.”

“Ow.”

Plates clattered loudly as Mark slammed his fist down onto the table angrily. “If it hurts so much, Rick, then stop bloody _poking_ it!”

“Hey!” the blond man in question exclaimed, pulling his hand away from the bruise forming around his eye. “This is a war wound, I demand respect.”

“You walked into the door,” Adam corrected beside him, not looking up from his meal.

“Go fuck yourself,” Rick shot back, Adam just humming in agreement, still not looking up at him. “Can you believe him? How rude, I’m injured.”

“It’s superficial,” Adam muttered, earning a glare that he didn’t even notice.

“Who are you even talking to?” Jackson asked, looking around slowly. “Mark isn’t listening to you anymore.”

“I’m talking to you,” Rick lied quickly. “Besides, who are you to talk about war wounds. I saw you in there, do you even have _any_ combat experience?”

“I was an electrician, not a soldier,” Jackson defended, inwardly cursing as the man’s question drew everyone’s attention to them. “Of course I don’t have any combat experience. Didn’t stop me from putting you on your ass though did it?”

“Fluke.”

“I did it three times in a row,” he argued simply.

“Bite me,” Rick snapped.

“He did. I was watching you two spar,” Steve piped up, saying his first words since they’d sat down to lunch.

“He pulled my hair, I panicked,” Jackson lied. Honestly, he he’d been trying so hard not to accidentally use his ‘enhancements’, that he’d done the only thing he could think of that didn’t involve magically throwing him across the room or freezing him into a block of ice.

“You cheated,” Rick argued.

“I have no combat training, of course I’m going to take every advantage I can,” Jackson countered, smiling innocently at Rick as ‘Echo Five’ mock-glared at him. “You’re just salty Riordan declared me the winner.”

“‘Salty’?” Steve repeated as the others laughed and started teasing Rick again, the taller blond leaning towards Jackson with a frown on his face.

“Upset,” Jackson explained.

When Steve just blinked at him he sighed, frowning for a moment as he tried to think about the first time he’d heard the word before. “People use it in video games a lot,” he clarified, “They’ll say it like ‘You salty?’ when they kick someone’s ass, you know? Especially if the other person gets all bitter and sulky about it.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because tears are salty,” he shrugged, “I don’t know, I’ve never actually looked it up before.”

Steve made an understanding noise and went back to his food, Jackson eyeing him for a moment before going back to his own. The blond had been rather subdued since yesterday, when they’d sat down for their first meal as Echo squad. Perhaps he was having flashbacks to his old squad in the army, Mark had already mentioned during breakfast that it was like he was back in basic with the guys. Or maybe he was just a quiet guy, Jackson hardly knew him well enough to be able to tell, he could be the strong and silent type.

And he was definitely strong, he’d run through last night’s combat training and that morning’s obstacle courses looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. And Jackson had woken part way through the night to find Steve on the ground doing one-handed push-ups between their beds.

“What do you think, Jack?” Declan asked, once again intentionally ignoring someone’s request to be called something specific. (He repetitively mixed up Rick and Richard, and he refused to call Jamie anything but James). “Adam said Riordan’s a bit of a wannabe.”

“Adam was joking,” Adam said quickly, “I meant he’s got nothing on my old drill sergeant.”

“He seems nicer than the guys you always see in the movies. He didn’t call us ladies once,” Jackson admitted, hearing a soft snort coming from Steve as everyone else agreed.

As Declan turned away, obviously not finding the support he expected, Steve shifted and caught Jackson’s attention with a gentle bump of his elbow. “If you want, I can show you some basic drills in our downtime,” he offered quietly, “Since you don’t have prior training.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Jackson said quickly, lowering his voice to match the blond’s. “Thanks.”

Today had really shown him how far behind everyone else he was. Most of the others at least had basic fighting skills, with all but him and Sebastian being untrained and unable to hit the target when they were at firearms practice after lunch. Unless they got some private training, they’d fall behind, and that wasn’t exactly something Jackson was willing to do.

“A unit is only as strong as its weakest member,” Steve explained with a shrug, “And I don’t consider Eight to be part of my unit.”

“I’m not sure if that was a compliment or an insult, but I get what you’re saying,” he mumbled, glancing down at where Declan was busy talking loudly… about himself.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve corrected, pulling a face. “I just meant that-”

“That I have a lot to learn to keep up,” Jackson interrupted, “I get it.”

“If you ever need help, just ask,” the blond said simply.

Jackson just smiled politely. “We’ll see.”

* * *

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

It wasn’t his fault, not really. Steve had planned for this to go down between just him and Jackson, he hadn’t been expecting Rick to squirm his way into receiving an invitation to the gym before bed as well.

“Four and a thumb. I’m fine. Can I get up now?”

As the super soldier moved aside, watching as Rick awkwardly climbed to his feet, Steve glanced over at where Jackson was standing with an innocent half-smile.

Let him smile, Steve had already won. His ‘kind’ offer of training having served its purpose, just one session having been enough to prove that Jackson was a liar.

If his excuses earlier hadn’t given it away, then his ‘I have no combat training’ claim did. His form was a little off, sure, but his right hook had certainly been trained enough to knock Rick out for a minute or two.

“You said you couldn’t fight,” Rick accused, jabbing a finger in Jackson’s direction as he shook his head to clear it.

“Actually I said I had no combat _experience_ ,” the shorter brunet man argued, crossing his arms defensively as his eyes flicked to Steve for a moment. “I _did_ box back in high school though, and I know how to throw a punch.”

The serum may not have gifted him with the ability to tell when someone was lying, but even Steve could tell that ‘Jackson Foster’ was hiding something. (And he remembered listening to Thor waxing poetic about his ‘lady friend’ named Jane Foster, so they could have tried a little harder to come up with a cover story.)

“For the record,” Rick muttered, “Not bad.”

“For the record,” Jackson countered, “I take offense at being called a ‘skinny runt’.”

“Noted,” the ex-cop said, rubbing his jaw with a slow smile. “Still, you’re more baby fat than muscle. I just didn’t expect you to know how to hit.”

Then, in the way of most twenty-first century men, Jackson unashamedly peeled off his loose shirt to show off his chest. “I may not be a specimen like _that_ ,” the man said with a pointed look in Steve’s direction, “But I _do_ actually exercise, you know.”

“Looks are one thing, but do you even lift?” Rick asked, before smirking. “Bro?”

Almost feeling like he was back among the Commandos as Jackson barked out a laugh and threw a mock punch at Rick’s arm, Steve watched as the brunet pulled his shirt back on and let Rick guide his legs into a proper fighting stance. How long would it take for Foster to blow his cover in front of the other guys? He knew some of the others were suspicious about the fact that an _electrician_ of all things had been brought in, especially since they were curious enough about what made Steve special enough that SHIELD had made this a twelve-man group instead of a normal ten-man one. But what was special about an electrician that warranted this kind of special treatment?

Steve himself had an excuse, that his prior ‘special forces’ training meant that the Academy was only a technicality. But Jackson? Jackson didn’t have an excuse beyond shrugging when he was asked.

A loud thud made him look up to find Rick on the floor again with Jackson’s arm extended. “I think I did that wrong,” the man muttered, swooping down to help the ex-cop back to his feet, “You said feet right?”

“I said feet,” Rick agreed, arms wrapped around his chest, “But that was good too.”

“Keep your hands up, you’re not going to block any punches with them down by your sides,” Steve added, realizing that if he was supposed to be teaching Jackson then he better actually start teaching. Reaching out to raise Jackson’s hands himself, he curled them into fists and gently nudged his waist until it was facing Rick dead on. “And try stand still, bouncing in place like that only works in the movies.”

“Right. Duh,” the man muttered as he let Steve adjust his stance.

He’d play nice. Just because he didn’t like SHIELD’s constant need to spy on him, didn’t mean he should take it out on the man sent to do it. No, he’d take it out on Fury when he next met the man, since he’d thought they’d agreed that they didn’t need someone watching his every move the last time they’d spoken. He understood that SHIELD wanted to keep an eye on someone with his abilities and influence, but Steve wanted his privacy, whether SHIELD wanted to give it to him or not.

A second thud made him wince, a grunt sounding as this time it was Jackson who hit the ground, Rick looking undeniably proud of himself.

At least Steve would win in a fight if Jackson was ordered to assassinate him, the other man looked like he was seeing stars from just an ordinary flip. If _Steve_ did a Judo throw on him, he’d send Jackson straight through the wall.

* * *

Guns were scary.

Or rather, how good Jackson was with guns was scary.

He’d never used one before, having only seen them on TV and in movies. So for him to take to firing a gun with an ease he’d only ever had when it came to sarcasm, was rather intimidating for the former electrician.

And sure Jackson doubted he’d ever actually use a gun when he came to work for SHIELD properly – since ‘superheroes’ don’t use guns – but the way it fit in his grip just right was enough to make him shudder sometimes. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to know how to use one properly, because if it came down to it, he’d shoot a hundred people if they were going to shoot him first.

Staring intently at the printed diagram before him, pretending not to notice the way everyone else around him had started trying to piece together their own guns, Jackson studied the picture confidently. He couldn’t believe that being an electrician would actually help him here of all places, if anyone was used to looking at a picture and working from it perfectly, it would be a guy who knows how to wire an entire building from just a single diagram.

“Foster! Get your ass moving!”

Not responding, Jackson just glanced at the image once more before turning to the gun, fighting the urge to start humming as he reassembled it casually. When he was done, he just set it back down onto the table and smiled at Declan who was standing at the station beside him with half a gun and an annoyed look on his face.

“Done this before?” Riordan asked, appearing at his shoulder silently.

“No Sir,” Jackson answered quickly, “I’m a man, I’m good with directions.”

The man just laughed, slapping him roughly on the shoulder before striding off, leaving him to glance up and down the long table at the rest of Echo squad. He was hardly the first person finished, most of the military men were standing there patiently, and Steve seemed to be taking his gun apart and reassembling it repetitively out of boredom. Still, he’d beaten both of the cops, Sebastian, and Declan, so he was rather pleased with himself.

Now he just had to hope they weren’t going to be made to fire them, since Jackson was still rather rough compared to the guys who used to wield guns for a living. He knew he’d get better at it quickly, but he wanted to keep his little pleased buzz for when they got to sparring, the last couple of days had shown he wasn’t all that good at restraining his superhuman abilities when it came to getting punched in the face. Twice already he’d found his fists icing over slightly after he’d taken a particularly hard hit, and he knew himself well enough to know that if he hit back then he’d freeze Echo squad solid.

And that was bad, for obvious reasons.

Meeting Rick’s eyes and smirking when the man winked at him, almost slamming his gun down on the table in front of him, he rolled his eyes as Riordan manifested at the blond’s side and nodded approvingly.

Rick was a godsend. While Steve was almost constantly in some kind of bad mood, (Jackson blamed the PTSD), Rick was unnaturally cheerful and constantly trying to make them laugh during their limited downtime. And while Steve had backed out of the so called ‘drill training’ pretty quickly, usually leaving Jackson with the less combat-orientated members of Echo, Rick had yet to miss a single evening and did his best to teach them.

And sure, Rick didn’t exactly fit the Elle-shaped hole in his life, he was flexible enough to try his best anyway.

Funny how spending twelve years in almost constant contact with someone made their absence so much harder to survive. Jackson didn’t remember the last time he’d gone this long without Elle. She always went to his family home with him when he was called back, being practically part of the family as far as his mother was concerned. And Elle’s Dad treated him more like a son than Jackson’s own did, so if he didn’t show up for their family reunions then he could expect an expectant phone call.

He kind of hoped she missed him too, it would mean she’d be less likely to leave him alone when this was done.

Attention snapping back as Riordan whistled loudly, Jackson fell in line as they were led from the room. He couldn’t help but admit though, all things considered, that he kind of liked being at the Academy. Maybe it wasn’t as bad of a choice for him as Marsh had said it was, maybe he wasn’t made for the marines, but he _was_ made for SHIELD. He felt alive, in a weird unfamiliar way, even as his arms and legs ached from the drills they’d made Echo run early every morning.

“You’re limping.”

“I’m fine,” Jackson whispered back to Steve, the blond not looking at him as they half-marched down the hallways.

“You’re hurt,” the man denied.

“I’m sore,” he said softly, “I’ll be fine.”

“It gets harder each week,” Steve warned quietly, “Can you handle it?”

“I’m _very_ good with my hands,” Jackson countered, wanting to take it back immediately as his ‘roommate’ stumbled suddenly, the look on the man’s face implying that he had definitely caught the flirtatious undertones to his voice. “I mean, you know what I mean,” he corrected, refusing to look at either Jamie or Corey who were looking back at them in amusement.

“QUIET BACK THERE!”

Jaw snapping shut as everyone’s back straightened automatically, he continued down the hall to the gym with the rest of his squad. Sparring for the rest of the morning, if he remembered correctly, then they’d get a quick chance to shower before an even quicker lunch.

Less than ten minutes later he was proven right, landing on his back with a suppressed grunt of pain, Steve standing over him with a blank expression on his face.

“Why do you always have to throw me?” he half-whined.

“Foster!” Riordan shouted in the distance.

“Why do you always have to get back up?” Steve countered, raising his eyebrow as his voice lowered. “I told you it’d get harder.”

Pushing himself off the ground and raising his hands defensively, Jackson considered the ache that had become a permanent feature of his body since joining the Academy. He hurt a little, but he was stubborn enough that he’d have just gotten up again, and he _had_ gotten up the few times he’d been beaten up in high school. Steve packed a mean punch, but with his powers, Jackson was willing to bet his was meaner.

Shrugging as Steve shot him a look that was both disbelieving and approving, Jackson tried his best at a casual smile. He couldn’t beat the blond, the man was too well trained for sheer strength to overcome, but Jackson could do this best.

“I can do this all day.”

If possible, Steve’s face went blanker, the man’s muscles shifting beneath his shirt as he readied to attack again. Ducking to the side as the man lunged, only getting a second of warning, Jackson allowed himself to move without holding himself back.

_Thwack!_

Jumping back as Steve’s jaw snapped to the side, he shook out his fist absently as the man straightened, turning to Jackson as a curious look flashed across his face. Okay, so he’d finally hit the man during their ‘warm up sparring’, that was good right? Right?

Seconds later a foot was cutting through the air, his ass hitting the ground as he threw himself backwards to avoid it. Scrambling to his feet as Steve advanced on him, he took a blow to his quickly raised arm and lashed out, his right hook slamming into the man’s shoulder as the blond shifted to avoid it.

What could he do? Steve was bigger than him, would be considered stronger than him if Jackson didn’t have superpowers. He needed to be careful or Steve would just put him down. What did he normally do when he was fighting someone bigger and stronger than him? Or rather, what did he do when running away wasn’t an option?

Oh… right…

His own foot slamming into the inside of Steve’s thigh as the man went to kick him again, Jackson backhanded him and knocked him off balance, watching as the giant man went down to the sound of Rick’s muffled cheering in the background.

Panting as he backed away from the fallen Steve, Jackson fought the urge to look away from the man to try find Riordan. He wasn’t going to get in trouble for cheating was he?

Was he?

* * *

His jaw ached. The skin was tender, and even a little red where Foster’s hit had landed, his serum-enhanced healing factor having already repaired the bruise that had briefly formed.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was, there had been a bruise in the first place. That Jackson Foster had somehow managed to not only dodge Steve’s kicks and punches, but that he’d been able to return them with enough force to bruise him. _That_ was the point.

Steve didn’t get bruised by ‘normal’ people, so how did Jackson do it?

Part of him itched to go confront the man, to demand to know how SHIELD had managed to replicate the serum on someone else. But another part of him told him to lie in wait, to try catch the man out so he couldn’t deny it. And even then, there was another part of Steve that told him to hunt Jackson down and drag him to the gym, to finally fight someone who could match him punch for punch.

Looking down at himself as he slowly flexed his arm, he watched the muscles shifted obediently and stretched the arms of his sleeves.

The serum can’t have been _too_ well replicated, could it? Jackson lacked the muscle mass that Steve had, and he was nowhere near as well-trained as Steve himself was, and the less said about Jackson’s undercover skills the better. But he was strong, and his reflexes were good enough to almost match Steve’s. And Jackson never walked away from training with any bruises, like Steve had until today.

So that was the question then. If Jackson had the serum as well, then why had he hidden it until today?

Looking towards the open door of the communal bathroom attached to Echo wing, Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone he’d hidden in his bag for a situation like this. Dialing the only number in the phone as he swung the bathroom door shut, he listened to it ringing through until it was answered.

_“Captain.”_

“Director Fury.”

* * *

“Hey, no hard feelings about earlier right?” Jackson asked the moment his roommate appeared in the doorway, his heart in his throat as the man blinked at him in shock.

“So long as you stop holding back,” Steve agreed calmly, the skin of his jaw still looking a tender red as he entered the room and shoved something small back into his toiletries bag.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘holding back’ as much as I would call it ‘playing fair’,” he said as the blond dropped onto his bed with a knowing look in his eyes. “I kind of cheated, aiming for the leg like that.”

“In a real fight, your opponent won’t care about what’s fair.”

“Well this wasn’t a real fight,” Jackson argued, “And I do care about what’s fair.”

He didn’t, not really, but if he didn’t apologize to Steve it would make the next twenty-three weeks a living hell. And well, he honestly did like the guy, even if Steve didn’t seem to like him all that much. It wasn’t much of a hardship to apologize to him, especially when he _did_ feel bad for knocking him on his ass earlier that day. (Whether he was hoping that apologizing would stop the man from beating the shit out of him tomorrow was irrelevant and totally not part of things).

“It’s fine,” Steve said simply, shaking his head as they listened to Jamie yelling something in the room opposite theirs. “It really is.”

“Well, maybe one day you could show me that twisting kick you used on me earlier,” Jackson muttered half-heartedly, both of them knowing he was just saying it.

“ECHO! FALL IN!”

Scrambling to his feet and getting out the door seconds after Steve, Jackson quickly stood at attention just outside the door he shut behind him.

“Echo Twelve,” Riordan’s voice called, sounding eager for some reason. “You’ve got yourself a visitor.”

Eyes flicking over before he could stop them, the sight of a _really_ short dark-haired woman pulled him up sho- er.

“She’s promised to make you bleed, so I’m thinking of letting her have you for the night,” Riordan said happily, jerking his head in and making Jackson step out nervously, approaching the two of them. “I want him back in one piece,” the man said under his breath as he led them out into the hallway, “So long as he’s got all of his limbs when you give him back, he’s all yours.”

Unable to help his betrayed look, something that only made Riordan laugh again as he strode off, Jackson swallowed cautiously as he turned to face the woman. She didn’t _look_ like much, shorter even than his shoulders, but there was a look in her eyes that promised him pain if he commented on anything she didn’t like. She actually looked more dangerous than Fury, and would look even scarier with an eye-patch he thought.

“Follow.”

Wincing as the woman spun on her heel and started walking rapidly, he hurried after her quickly, not wanting to fall behind and risk anything.

The door he was led to was in a part of the Academy that he’d never been in before, a simple wooden door with an equally simple plaque on it labelled _‘A-39’_. Of course, it’s simplicity only made the descending staircase behind it even more terrifying.

“Mr. Foster, meet Dr. Smith,” the woman introduced, waving her hand at the… metal training dummy situated in the middle of the room, surrounded by a glass wall and computers. “She’ll be a major part of your training,” she continued as he eyed the life-like dummy suspiciously, “We’re almost set up in here fully, so we can actually begin earlier than we planned.”

“Planned? What exactly do we have planned?” Jackson asked, turning to face the woman who was glancing over something on her clipboard.

“My name is Vera Smith,” the woman answered instead, holding the clipboard and a pen out to him expectantly. “You’re to call me ‘Mrs. Smith’ and nothing else, and you’re to call her Dr. Smith, and nothing else. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied quickly, glancing down at the questionnaire for just a moment before it was snatched out of his hands by someone behind him.

“Relax,” ‘Dr. Smith’ ordered him as she grabbed his arm and started dragging him around the corner of the glass ‘box’ in the middle of the room. “We’re not entirely ready for you, so she’s worried that Mr. Baymax might take a little damage tonight,” she explained as she pushed him at the open door expectantly.

“Mr. Baymax?” he echoed.

“There isn’t time to talk, Mr. Foster,” Mrs. Smith cut in, “We need to see your current maximum power so we know what to work from. Dr. Smith please exit the tank.”

Dr. Smith rolled her eyes, “We’re your team,” she said quickly. “When you graduate the Academy we’ll be going with you to the ‘lair’ SHIELD will be assigning you to work from. William and someone else will be joining us there.”

“I get a team?” Jackson asked dumbly, not having thought about the possibility of that happening.

Dr. Smith beamed at him excitedly, “You get a team.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson gets a team!
> 
> Jackson got a team, and unfortunately I didn’t get a break. This chapter was really hard to write, since I wasn’t too sure how to best make a montage without just leaping about randomly like you see in the movies. Still, I’m hoping I did you guys proud-ish, since I’m kind of proud of how it ended which was NOT to schedule at all.


End file.
